


keep a little fire

by thesedangers



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Witches, Animal Transformation, Found Family, M/M, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, in which novice witch travis has to deal with A Lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29165436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesedangers/pseuds/thesedangers
Summary: Volantes is a city full of great witches, but Travis isn’t one of them. Not yet.It should be fine. He’s young, still. Good at magic, for the most part. He has a lot of years left before it fades and disappears, so why does it feel like he’s going in circles and getting nowhere? Why is it so difficult when it seems so effortless for Oskar, for Sanny, for everyone else around him? Why does ithurt?And what the hell is that Patrick guy’s problem?Or: Nolan transforms himself into a cat, can’t turn back, and finds the only person who can communicate with him. Unfortunately for him, that person is Travis. Unfortunately for Travis, this leads to complications.
Relationships: Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick
Comments: 46
Kudos: 97





	1. curses & cats

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to this, a witch au where the flyers practice magic, live in community, drive each other up the wall, and take care of each other.  
>    
> inspired by mirrorball by taylor swift, my witchy board on pinterest, tk getting healthy scratched the other night, kev calling patty “baby cat”, and a long convo i had with my mom about natural talents versus just working really really hard for something you want. 

Travis like, _knows_ he’s not the best at magic.

Does he want to be? Well, yeah. That would be, all things considered, a good deal for him. Travis Konecny, the best witch in Volantes? It’s not like he’s never had _that_ dream before. Attempting to manifest greatness during morning huddle? That would pretty much be his _modus operandi_. And when the manifesting never got anywhere? Well. Maybe he just needed some more candles.

(Was his room in the Niche fully covered in candles? Not _fully._ There was always some more room somewhere.)

Him not being the best at magic was definitely not for a lack of trying. Ever since he first felt the spark, ever since he first learned he was one of the few in Volantes who could practice, ever since he was conscripted by AV, all he did was try. Read the books, did the meditations, lit the candles, learned the spells and recipes and all the herb names and original names and uses and, and, and… Some of the stuff regarding magic made his head spin. Literally, sometimes. Beezer was really into physical magic, and shit had a tendency to get weird.

But he kept on. Every once in a while Claude came back from his councils with AV with a good word specifically for him, usually about his advances in emotional magic, or dreamspace, or another area Travis was trying to master. AV thought the emotional stuff came easy to him, and encouraged it. Travis never told him, Claude, or anyone else that nothing about magic came easy to him. It was long nights with his myriad of candles lit, it was holing away in Coots’ massive library, it was spending unhealthy amounts of time in dreamspace, sometimes just to get away from it all. 

Most of the time, magic exhausted him. But the spark, the pull behind his navel and between his eyes and in his fingertips when he practiced and when he felt the others practice, never dimmed, so he kept pushing. Kept trying, even when all it meant was a deep pain in his chest and an ache between his eyes. He’d left his family for this, after all. Rejected a life outside of the Niche. Volantes was at peace, sure, but if one of the surrounding territories decided to try something, she’d need her witches to protect her. That’s why AV trained them so hard, pushed them further and further. Encouraged them to be the best. 

And was inevitably disappointed when Travis fell short.

Not that he’d ever met the man. Claude was his messenger, and their leader by default. _Claude_ , with his ginger beard trimmed to perfection and his tendency to sing while he mixed potions, was what Travis longed to be. He’d seen Claude levitate, he’d seen Claude control energy, he’d seen Claude scream at Frosty for leaving the lid off of his big jar of sage — _again, how many times do I have to tell you, Morgan—_ and despite all that, Claude was a good leader. The best. Travis remembered his own dad, sure, but sometimes when he thought the word _dad_ Claude’s beardy face showed up before his biological dad’s did. 

Travis crossed his legs. Thought about it, uncrossed them, and then crossed them a different way. The other foot on top, this time. He was in his small room, tucked away in the second corridor of the third floor of the Niche, with a metal 11 on the door. There were a few candles (a few of many) lit on the wooden floor in front of him, and his back was to his bed. One of them smelled like lavender. He inhaled and watched the flames sputter.

Closing his eyes, he slowly ran through the meditation exercise Coots had them do that morning during huddle. (Coots called it _conclave_ , a lot of the older witches did. Travis liked _huddle._ They did tend to huddle during it; a lot of Volantes witches liked to touch and be touched. Travis couldn’t count the times he’d woken up in the middle of the night to Oskar in his bed, pressed next to him for warmth, or Beezer sprawled across his legs like a stupidly heavy throw blanket.) He was doing the exercise now because something had felt weird when he meditated during huddle, and he was just checking—

 _Shit._ Yeah, right there. A little pain in his chest, not the normal pain, but different in some way, right on the nine count of his exercise. _Pain_ was the wrong word, it felt more like someone had taken a melon baller and scooped a tiny bit of him out. An emptiness. Something gone. It felt cold. One of his candles winked out.

“That’s not ominous at all,” Travis said out loud to the empty room. As if to say _fuck you_ , another candle flame disappeared, along with the strange feeling in his chest. _Huh._ Maybe he was allergic to lavender. God, that would suck— lavender smelled so good.

 _Whatever._ Everything seemed to be fine now. He blew out the other three candles and went to find some lunch.

  
  


*****

Claude was making tomato soup.

Aside from being their leader as well as their best potions mixer, hands down, Claude made some kickass tomato soup. There were four stools at the kitchen island’s bar, and three were occupied. Travis slid between Oskar and Scotty, accepting a bowl from the second and a side hug from the first. Oskar stuck his nose in Travis’s hair.

“Lavender,” he said. “Were you spellcasting upstairs?”

Travis pushed him away. He hadn’t washed his hair in a hot second, and no one’s nose needed to be all up in his business like that. “Meditating. Tried out a new candle, I think it’s defective.”

“Watch yourself,” Provy said as he leaned over Travis to grab two bowls. He kept one for himself and handed the other back to Nisky. A large space in the outer area of the Niche had been built just for candlemaking, a very specific kind of magical skill that Provy learned from Nisky, an older witch and his mentor. Like a lot of the Niche’s younger witches, Provy took what he learned and absolutely ran with it. His own little niche of magic, just like _the_ Niche was the witches’ little niche away from the wider world. 

“Did the wick pop?” Nisky asked as he got in line behind Provy. “Do you remember how many times? It can have meaning, you know—” he elbowed Provy like he was seeing if he was listening. “If they flashed specific colors, too.”

“No popping,” Travis said and got in line himself, sandwiched still between Oskar and Scotty. Nisky shrugged like that was too bad, and more people poured into the kitchen, jostling and bumping shoulders and grabbing bowls as they got in the lunch line.

The Niche’s big kitchen (there were a few smaller ones scattered around, mostly for magical purposes— a copper skull plaque on any door meant _eat things in here at your own risk_ , the risk being death usually) was a wide room with curved walls and a low ceiling. Vents funneled steam out and up, and the dark wooden walls kept the warmth in. It was a tight fit, only about fifteen witches at a time could even stand in the kitchen, and the rest of them spilled out into the center courtyard and dining area. Claude stood at a huge stove, a black apron tied around his waist, three giant cauldrons bubbling in front of him. Two were stirring themselves, and he had a long wooden spoon in his right hand and was serving from the largest cauldron first. Every time he shifted the pattern on his apron became clearer; eyes stitched with silver thread. Travis stared, watching the pattern move, and one of the eyes winked at him.

Two others were cooking with Claude; Bunny stood on the other side of the island, by the industrial sized sink, slicing a huge loaf of crusty bread, as Nic tore basil by hand into a serving bowl. Bunny hadn’t even spent a year at the Niche yet, and didn’t seem to have any particular magical affinity yet. Some of them didn’t. But it seemed like a strange thing, to not have any gut instinct pulling towards a specific subset of magic. _Effortless_ , it looked like. The Niche was overflowing with _effortless._

In front of him, Claude poured soup into Oskar’s bowl and reached out his hand for Travis’s. 

“How’s it going, TK?” he asked.

“Weird,” Travis answered honestly. There was absolutely no use in lying to Claude, he’d learned that the hard way. “I feel kinda, I don’t know.” He wiggled his hand in an accurate portrayal of his mental state. It wasn’t just the candle, or the feeling inside his chest that had disappeared just as quickly as it came. “Ever since huddle this morning.”

“Could be something negative.” Claude ladled more soup than normal into his bowl. “Meet me in the Lookout after lunch, okay?”

 _Fuck_. Travis nodded, got some bread from Bunny, let Nic sprinkle basil on top of his soup, and went into the courtyard. There was no use disobeying an order from Claude, even though the Lookout definitely meant he was going to have to drink something disgusting and feel its effects for the rest of the day. The long table all the way to the left of the courtyard was already half full, but there was an open space between Sanny and Oskar, and he fit into it like they’d left it there just for him, which they probably did.

Travis had a lot of friends at the Niche; he’d go so far as to say he got along with everyone. Some people were unbelievably grumpy most of the time, like Scotty or Jake, and others liked to keep to themselves (a trait most of the defenders had, but not all of them, Sanny case in point), but there was no one who actively disliked anyone else. They were a good group, a good coven, and Travis loved them all. Oskar and Sanny, though, were probably his best friends in the whole world. 

As soon as he set his bowl down, Sanny flung his long ass arm around Travis’s shoulders and pulled him close.

“Heard you have to go to the Lookout,” he said. Travis let himself get put in a very gentle headlock. 

_Damn, no secrets among witches, huh?_

“Everything’s fine,” he managed to grunt as he wiggled free. “A little weird feeling during huddle, that’s all.” 

Oskar draped his cool hand across Travis’s forehead, pushing away his hair. Relaxation rolled down his temples, thick like syrup, and he exhaled for what felt like the first time since his room and the candles. Oskar’s magic always smelled clean, like freshly washed sheets and an open window on a windy spring day. He leaned onto Sanny’s shoulder, who immediately ruffled his hair and ruined the moment.

“ _God_.” Travis sat up, elbowed Sanny right in the ribs, and nudged Oskar with his knee to say thanks. They ate in silence for a while, the entire table murmuring about how good the soup was, or how good the bread was, or, again, the soup. It _was_ good, like always. Claude sat at the head of a different long table, listening intently as Coots told him something, hands in the air as he illustrated his story. Travis couldn’t tell for sure, but it felt like one of the eyes on Claude’s apron was focused right on him.

He wanted to eat slowly, savor his lunch, give himself some breathing room before the Lookout, but Claude’s soup was practically meant to be inhaled. It felt like five seconds before JVR was going around and gathering bowls; Oskar jumped up to help and Travis made like he was going to follow them back into the kitchen (he normally wouldn’t like, _want_ to do dishes, but almost anything was better than—)

He caught the _barest_ glimpse of Claude through a gap between Raffl and Moose, saw his eyebrow raise the _tiniest_ bit, and that was all it took. He let Sanny put him in another headlock, took the rest of Frosty's bread right out of his hands, and left the courtyard. 

The Lookout was, like the name suggested, the very top of the Niche. A spiral staircase took him up the tower, and yeah, sure, he was in pretty good shape, but his calves were on _fire_ by the time he got to the top. He knocked, and the door swung open of its own accord.

The Lookout was Jake’s area. Coots, because he ran the garden and was the resident herb expert, was up there a lot, too, and of course Claude, but everyone knew the Lookout was Jake’s space. No one messed with Jake’s space, or really even thought about climbing the staircase unless they’d been invited.

“Jakey,” Travis called into the cluttered tower. “Claude said—”

“I know what G said.” Jake was by the farthest window, sitting on a tall stool with his back to the door in front of a high table. An empty bowl with the remnants of tomato soup was pushed off to the side. Across the room Beezer sat with his legs crossed, lost in some medicinal book that Jake no doubt was making him read. “Get over here, TK. Tell me what happened during conclave.”

Travis took the stool beside Jake; he had to put his foot on the first rung and kind of heave himself up onto it. The table was covered in herbs, and he accidentally put his hand into a pile of dried vetiver. Jake gave him a look drier than the herbs.

“I just had Frosty up here, so I’d rather not have to clean up after another disaster witch, thanks.”

“I’m not as bad as _Frosty_ ,” Travis argued, shaking the vetiver off of his hand. Jake hummed, as if to say _that’s true_ , and Travis took it as a victory. “And nothing much happened in huddle. Like I told Claude, I’m feeling kinda weird. _Off_ , maybe. He said it might be something negative. There was a weird pain in my chest when I meditated on my own, but it went away quick and it hasn’t—“

Travis choked to a halt as Jake took his chin in his hand, turning his head from left to right as he looked into his eyes. He put both of his huge palms over Travis’s ears, and they began to warm up. 

Travis closed his eyes and focused on breathing. _In, out, in, out._ There was no use rushing Jake when he really got into it. There was really no use rushing Jake ever, in general. 

He didn’t know exactly how much time had passed before the pressure and warmth released. Travis opened his eyes to both Claude and Jake surveying him, heads tilted opposite ways like two of the Niche's many cats looking at the same food dish. Claude nudged Jake with his elbow. 

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing,” Jake said as Beezer closed his book and ambled over, peering over Jake’s shoulder. “No negativity, no strangeness, no hitch in his aura. Normal all around.”

“Huh.” Claude crossed his arms. “Well, that’s a good thing, I guess.”

Jake crossed his arms, same as Claude. They’d practiced together for so long they sometimes moved in sync. “Normal Konecny is either a blessing or a curse, depending on which way you look at it.”

“Hey!” Travis protested, and Claude grinned. 

“Glad you’re ok, bud.” He rubbed Travis’s shoulder before turning to leave. “Anything else comes up you let us know, yeah? If it comes back we’ll run some tests with the defenders or something.” 

“Sounds good.” Travis rolled his shoulder back, feeling the warmth and comfort from where Claude had touched him spread across his back. He turned to Jake. “I don’t have to—“

Jake gave him a look. “ _No_ you don’t have to drink any potion. They’re not that bad.”

Travis fought the urge to tell Jake just how excruciatingly bad they were, but decided not to push his luck, especially with Beezer pretending to choke in the background. He scraped the vetiver he’d messed up into a neater looking pile and hopped off his stool. 

“Thanks, Jakey,” he said. “If anything else happens, I’ll—”

“You’ll come here immediately,” Jake finished for him. “Maybe you should take the rest of the day off, just in case. Who are you with?”

“I told Coots I’d help him out this afternoon,” Travis said, “and I think I’m supposed to do a practice session with Scotty.” Jake winced.

“Don’t do that last thing,” he said. “I’ll let Laughts know he needs a new partner. If you’re dealing with any sort of negativity…” He trailed off and Beezer made a dead corpse face behind him. Travis laughed, the loud noise echoing around the Lookout. Jake frowned and Travis composed himself.

“Probably a good idea,” he said. “Bad vibes and Scotty go hand-in-hand. I’ll hang out on the fifth lawn and watch the defenders this afternoon, or is that too much?” Jake rolled his eyes.

“Just don’t get under anyone’s feet.”

“That’s my specialty.” Travis threw Jake a salute, winked at Beezer, and left the Lookout far behind him as quick as he could. The Niche was huge, a sprawling ancient compound made up of dormitory rooms, kitchens, training rooms, gardens, greenhouses, observatories, the planetarium, and Coots’s huge library. The Niche was warm and inviting and _home_ , and Travis knew it like its layout was etched onto his bones. 

He headed towards the gardens. He was late, but Coots knew everything that happened in the Niche. He was sure his weird feeling during huddle and subsequent trip to see Jake was common knowledge by now.

The sun hung in late afternoon position; it was three, maybe three thirty. Mud squelched under Travis’s boots as he trekked around the planetarium’s curved rock wall. It had rained the night before, a late spring shower that soaked everything and was still hanging around. It wasn’t too cold, but there was still a bite in the air that made Travis regret his short-sleeved shirt. Coots was always in cardigans, maybe he had an extra laying around the garden shed.

He had company, he saw as soon as the wide expanse of the gardens came into view. Coots knelt by the mint bushes with Nic, and farther down, by the sunflowers, Kevin was pruning something. As soon as he caught sight of Travis, Coots threw him a pair of garden gloves.

“Everything okay?” he asked. Travis tapped his forehead. 

“All good up here.”

“Yeah, besides the usual stuff,” Kevin yelled from behind the sunflowers. Travis tugged on the gloves; they molded to his hands like a second skin. Garden magic, man. Coots knew what was up.

“Shut up, Hayesey,” he yelled back, and Coots pointed him towards the blackberry brambles. No matter the season, Coots could coax whatever he wanted out of the ground, and the blackberries looked just about ripe. Travis picked up a container, tugged the gloves up as far as they could go, and began extracting the berries from the tangle of prickles. Half listening as Coots explained to Nic how to infuse the mint soil with some property to help them grow quicker, he fell into a rhythm picking berries and hearing them drop into the container. 

As soon as Kevin dropped off his sunflower prunings beside Coots’s half-full wheelbarrow, he grabbed a pair of gloves for himself and joined Travis by the brambles. His big hands weren’t as good for picking berries as Travis’s, and he muttered curses, some magical, some not, every time he squished one, dropped one, or got pricked.

“You suck at this,” Travis eventually commented. Kevin pushed him. He had a blackberry juice stain around his lips.

“Came to keep you company, anyway,” he returned in his deep rumble. “Heard you got hit with some curse earlier today.”

“Is that what the rumor is, now?”

“Ask Sanny.”

Travis rolled his eyes. “If you’re going around believing whatever Sanny tells you, you _deserve_ to be cursed.” Kevin laughed his loud, goofy laugh and ruffled Travis’s hair.

“Glad you’re okay anyway, Teeksy. Now get those last berries so I don’t have to.”

Travis finished picking the berries as Kevin made sure Coots and Nic didn’t need help with anything else. As soon as Travis told him that the rest of his afternoon plans included watching the defenders, Kevin was in. He then wrangled Travis into helping him practice spellcasting while they watched, but Travis was fine with it. He didn’t think Jake would mind, either; Kevin’s magic wasn’t harsh or dark, he was the Niche’s resident rituals witch and took his job very seriously. Little things Kevin did that seemed normal were actually very intricately designed rituals, and he took his time weaving each one with specific magical properties. 

Like his nicknames. He had a myriad of different names for each witch in the Niche, but everyone had one special name that Kevin had boosted with magic. Every time he said it, the magic worked. He called Travis _TK_ , and _Konecny_ , and _Teeks_ like everyone else, but when he said _Teeksy_ it was like a wave of calm. It made Travis feel grounded and secure, exactly what he needed to feel whenever Kevin said it. Before or sometimes after a particularly difficult group session, Kevin liked to stand at the door to the largest training hall and call out names as they entered. _Beezy, Leaf-Eater, Osky, Ghosty, Pigeon, Raff, Moooooooose!_ The room would hum, the hairs on Travis’s arms would stand on end. _Names hold power,_ he remembered hearing Claude say once. Even without Kevin’s magic weaving through them. _Give someone your name, you give them power over you._

_Be careful._

First names were strictly a Niche thing, anyway, and any time they went out into Greater Volantes they used last names only. It was kind of a tradition in Volantes; parents usually held onto their kids’ first names until their first birthday, and by that time it was clear if they were able to practice magic or not. If yes, they would keep the first name as a close family secret, if not, that was their name day.

Visiting families and testing their kids was one of Claude’s jobs under AV, even though the amount of kids who were able to practice were few and far between nowadays. On their twelfth birthday they would be able to be conscripted, and sent to the Niche if they wanted to unlock their abilities and really learn how to practice. If not, and that was rare, they were taken by Claude to AV, who would strip them of the responsibility of magic forever. No one at the Niche, besides Claude, knew what that process was even like.

If the first birthday was name day for non practicers, the twelfth birthday was name day for witches. Travis would never forget walking into the Niche on the day he turned twelve, and telling a group of people who weren’t his family for the very first time that his name was _Travis Konecny_ , and immediately learning that there was another Travis in the group. He resented Sanny for about five whole seconds before _other Travis_ (as he referred to him for about a month, and still did every once in a while when he was pissed off) put him in a headlock. They were pretty much inseparable after that. 

Before heading to the fifth yard to watch the defenders, they stopped by Kevin’s room, a few hallways down from Travis’s. The door had a metal 13 bolted to the outside, and was an absolute disaster inside. Kevin dug in a pile of clothes as Travis rooted through his closet for a jacket (the only one that wasn’t a floor-length duster or had some sort of feather pattern was a quarter-zip pullover made of the softest dark green fleece; it hit Travis about mid-thigh and he silently vowed to never return it) and as soon as Kevin’s arms were full of books, papers, and a small bag (spellcasting items, if Travis had to guess, or maybe snacks), they headed to the fifth yard.

The defenders were a tight-knit group of witches who practiced physical magic. Sanny was one, and so was Provy, and Nisky watched over them closer than the hens who wandered the Niche’s yards watched over their chicks. They had one job on missions or if Volantes was ever attacked— they defended the protectors. 

Volantes had three protector witches; Lyon was good but not great, Moose was a veteran protector and, like Nisky, watched over his protégés, and Carter… Well. 

Travis and Kevin walked onto the fifth yard in time to watch Moose heft a hand cannon that shot harmless (but heavy enough to knock over an unsuspecting witch) foam rockets onto his shoulder. He aimed it right at Provy, who had been enlisted to help with the exercise as his fellow defenders hung out near the entrance, waiting their turn. Moose fired the cannon.

The light purple rocket shot from its home, ready to serve its purpose of knocking Provy right onto his ass, when it halted, midair, a hands’ width away from Provy’s heart. A force field, invisible except for a slight shimmer and a ripple in the air, just as big around as the rocket, floated between it and its target. The force field sharpened and the rocket shuddered as it was torn in two. Travis winced. There —the pain in his chest, the melon-baller feeling— _shit_. 

The rocket fell, halved and useless, to the ground. A few paces away, Carter stood, his own chest heaving, with his hand outstretched and his eyes covered by a thick blindfold.

“Whoa,” Kevin breathed out. Carter lifted the blindfold above one eye.

“I got it, right?”

Across the yard, Lyon whooped. Provy, not shaken in the slightest, picked up the foam pieces and threw them, one by one, into the bin by the entrance. He turned to clap Carter on the shoulder as the other defenders swarmed them, taking turns yelling out compliments and praise until his ears turned a violent shade of pink. Moose berated him a little bit, for tearing the rocket, which apparently he had never done before that afternoon. Even _that_ was tinged with praise, though, because holy hell, Hartsy, how powerful did you have to be to tear through tangible objects with a force field, etcetera, etcetera. 

All of that leaned a bit towards overkill, but, according to Claude, Volantes hadn’t had a prodigy protector in decades. Carter was young, he was strong, and when all was said and done, really had Volantes resting on his (admittedly broad) shoulders. _That_ was power. _That_ was responsibility. AV trusted him, trusted Moose to train him. Just thinking about it made Travis a little queasy, and he never knew if it was because of discomfort from even thinking about the sheer weight of Carter's role in the coven, or jealousy that he was never going to be in a position like that.

Kevin settled on one of the open window sills that split the inner corridor from the fifth yard. The windows didn’t have any glass panes but just soared upward into an arch, leaving a wide space at the bottom that made a perfect bench for two people to sit, leaning against one side of the arch each and tangling their feet in the middle. That’s what Travis did, hopping up onto the other side and slotting his feet firmly under Kevin’s crossed legs. He balled his fists into Kevin’s fleece (his fleece, now) and got comfortable as Kevin arranged his papers. 

In the yard, the defenders fanned out around Carter. Nisky, Moose, Lyon, and Nic, who Travis had heard volunteer as he and Coots walked back from the gardens, each grabbed one of the foam cannons. 

In a real altercation, or fight, or full-scale battle between witches, the protectors were in the rear of the charge, well, protecting. They used their force field protection magic to block the forwards from spells and curses and all sorts of nasty stuff as they did what their name meant, and moved _forward_ to attack. 

Claude was a forward like many of the Niche’s witches, but he was also the leader. It was important for him to know exactly what each witch in his coven was capable of, so he could send them where they needed to be. The defenders stayed in the middle, the last line of, well, defense between the enemy and the protectors. Protectors were rare and defenders, were, well, not. A lot of witches had an affinity towards physical magic, and maybe one in a hundred could even practice protection magic, let alone become great at it.

And the protectors shielded the forwards (and the defenders, if they needed it) with their own special brand of magic. A good protector could shield one, or maybe two forwards at a time. A great protector could switch between who he was protecting quick enough to protect his entire coven. In his last session, Travis had seen Carter protect three people at once, and then switch to protecting three others, all without breaking a sweat. _Greatness_. It was so apparent in him, and in Claude, and in Coots. Provy, Jake, Oskar, Scotty. Even Kevin, scratching a pencil down his temple with his tongue between his teeth, was a natural. He understood magical theory, equations, and rituals like no one Travis had ever met. 

In the fifth yard, Moose and the rest of his group pelted the defenders with foam rockets as they blocked them from reaching Carter. In a real battle he’d be using his protection magic and could help his defenders if they needed it, but this was a drill so he was sitting, legs crossed, in the grass. Knowing him, he was probably getting some meditation time in.

Provy uppercut, and a rocket exploded into shreds of purple foam. 

Travis sat for a while longer, watching the defenders work and listening to Kevin mutter incantations back and forth, his notebook paper steaming under his pencil, but soon he got sick of burnt graphite smell and foam fragments pelting the right side of his body. He stood, made an excuse to Kevin that he might not have even heard, and headed back towards the center of the Niche. Grunts and yells and Nisky shouting instruction and encouragement — _back up, Myers! Ghost, good position! Braun, fix your stance before I fix it for you!_ — faded behind him as he walked, a little faster than usual.

The pain hadn’t come back, his chest felt normal and not at all empty. But _he_ kind of did. Felt empty. Or maybe too full; unused and unneeded. 

The last thing he wanted to do was go back to his room, or go find a quiet corner, or carve out a spot for himself in the library, and _try_. That’s all he ever did. Burn his fingers on candles and fill his lungs with smoking herbs and stare at spellbooks until his eyes ached. _I’m going to be great,_ he remembered thinking before stepping foot into the Niche. 

_I’m going to get through this without being a safety hazard,_ was his most recent thought. 

If he talked to anyone, like Claude or Oskar or Kevin, they wouldn’t understand. They saw him perform, they saw him do magic. He was fine, he was even good on a good day. They didn’t see the work, the stress, the struggle. Gaining new magical skills felt like he was clawing his way up a wall. It was draining. He felt _drained_. 

“God, this fuckin’ sucks,” he muttered to himself, and opened the double doors that led outward, to the winding road that would eventually lead into the heart of Volantes. He meant to head towards the weeping willow by the lake, sit in the little space between the curved, low-hanging branch and the tree’s sturdy trunk, maybe practice some spark conjuring until he felt less like a piece of shit, but in front of him, on the large oak slab that served as the Niche’s front stoop—

A cat.

Not just any cat. This cat was well-groomed, a brown that looked almost black, the color of the darkening sky, and larger than the normal cats that roamed the Niche, Travis would know. He made a point to make friends with all of them in case he ever needed to summon a cat army to attack Sanny or something. He’d never seen this cat before.

New cat looked up at him, and Travis took a step back.

Its eyes shone in the near darkness, a gray that was sometimes blue, sometimes green, depending on which way the light hit it. The cat’s eyes looked like the ocean, looked like a slate mountainside, looked like the labradorite bowl that Kevin made herb mixtures in whenever Travis had a headache or a hangover. Travis knelt and offered his hand to the cat.

“You have pretty eyes,” he said, and then tilted his head and frowned like he wasn’t exactly sure why he’d just said those words to a cat. The cat shied away from him, like it was too good to be pet by Travis’s admittedly unwashed hand, and Travis, right back to being embarrassing, made a little kissy noise at it.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, bud,” he said. The cat’s brow furrowed (did cats have brows?) and it finally took a step towards Travis.

It bumped its head onto Travis’s knuckles, and the moment his skin made contact with fur—

A scream. An absolute howl ripped through Travis’s mind, loud enough that he fell backwards, sprawled onto the wet grass in front of the Niche, clutching his head in agony. It echoed like cannonfire. 

_HELP ME._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: scotty knows *all* the cats at the niche, but not this one.
> 
> i'm on twitter @thesedangers for hockey analysis that's just meltdowns over nolpat's hair, you know how it goes.
> 
> -brie


	2. tea & tests

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> important psa: i actually don't know if travis sanheim hates cats.

Travis’s ragged breaths tore through the Niche’s silent front courtyard. He was still sprawled on his back, looking up at the stone vestibule’s ceiling, the wooden stoop under him cold through Kevin’s fleece. The voice echoed through his head, pounding on beat with his heart.

_Help me, help me, help me…_

Maybe it hadn’t even happened. He leaned up on his elbows, half-hoping that—

Nope. New cat was still there, staring at him with a level of intensity that perfectly matched the voice. Those blue-gray-green eyes that, sure, were still unfairly pretty for a cat, but _now_ they were giving Travis the creeps. There was something else behind those eyes, maybe the source of the voice? Maybe the cat really needed help?

Travis’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Do you need help?” he asked out loud.

The cat tilted its chin, looking at Travis like he was an idiot.

“I’m not an idiot,” Travis said. The cat seemed skeptical. “I can help, or I can find someone who can. You came to the right place, you know.” He pointed up, at the giant lantern hanging from the vestibule roof, bathing the courtyard in a soft glow. It was ancient, crafted by Niche witches generations and generations before Travis had even set foot on the property, and forged in the shape of a bursting star, with dozens of cloudy white glass points each holding a flickering candle. It lit itself, automatically, every night at seven o’clock exactly.

“We’re all witches here,” he continued. “If something weird’s going on with you…”

He trailed off. The cat was obviously not listening anymore, if it even had been listening in the first place. It padded up to the walnut slab double doors and put one paw on the carved wood. Letting out a loud _mrow_ , it looked back at Travis expectantly.

“Okay, okay, I get the message. Not me. We’ll find someone else to help.” Travis heaved himself off of the ground and yanked the door open, letting the cat inside first. This was weird as hell, sure, but half the stuff he saw at the Niche was weird, and he sure didn’t want any negative cat karma coming around to bite him in the ass. And the noise the cat had made, strange as it was, almost sounded like the voice that had yelled for help. Deep and rumbly, like standing underneath an avalanche.

The exact opposite of the cat’s striking eyes, but somehow also… _Pretty?_ Could a voice be pretty? Could a voice that _screamed at him about two minutes ago_ be pretty? Travis wasn’t about to dwell on it.

As he walked, letting the cat lead for reasons he didn’t know (laziness, maybe; it wasn’t as if the _cat_ knew where it was going), he weighed his options. No one at the Niche was really proficient in animal magic; it wasn’t practiced much, anyway, and seemed difficult as hell from what Travis had read. He could take it up to Jake, see what healing magic could do on a cat, but it was dark outside already and disturbing Jake after he’d turned in for the day was a surefire ticket to nightmare city. Maybe Coots, but plant magic seemed like the exact opposite of the kind of shit he’d need to tackle this cat problem.

Claude was the obvious answer, but two Travis Issues in one day might prove too much, even for Claude.

“Oskar,” he said to the cat. “We’ll go see what Oskar has to say about you, okay?” The cat looked over its shoulder like he didn’t know who Oskar was, and didn’t really care. Travis knelt and held out his arms.

“Come on,” he said, “we’re gonna have to walk a lot. You can get on my shoulders if you want.”

The cat actually hissed. Travis held firm.

“Don’t be an asshole. If you’re mean to Oskar, I’ll make you sleep in the henhouse.”

The cat didn’t hiss again, just narrowed its eyes at Travis until he stood up again and put his hands in the pockets of Kevin’s fleece.

“Fine,” he said, “do it your way. You better fuckin’ keep up, though.”

He closed his eyes and felt throughout the Niche for Oskar’s energy. This was a specific magic that each new witch was taught in their first months of training, and would go on to use about fifty times a day once they mastered it. The Niche was so big and sprawling, finding others in its depths would be near impossible if it weren’t for magic.

Oskar was easy to locate, both because his energy was so bright, and because he and Travis were together so often. The more time Travis spent with someone, the more he got accustomed to their energy and aura. It was the simplest thing in the world to reach out and find Oskar in a perpetual state of reaching back to find him. Their energies meeting in the middle, a thread he’d follow to find his friend wherever he was at.

The kitchen, it looked like, with Scotty, Sanny, and Provy. _Good_ , he’d have a whole bunch of opinions, some logical, some definitely not, and some dinner, too. He looked down at the cat again.

“Let’s go find out what’s up with you,” he said. “And I can feed you, if you keep that asshole energy to yourself.” The cat let out a soft _mrow_ , which sounded, to Travis at least, like a _yeah, right_. Typical.

Travis headed to the kitchen, his feet taking turns and staircases and secret passageways like it was second nature. The cat kept up, even though Travis _might_ have been walking faster than usual. Hey, if the cat was going to be an asshole, he might as well bring that same vibe to the table. Candle wicks sparked into flame, lighting his path as he walked, and they doused themselves as soon as he turned a different corner. If he glanced over his shoulder more than once, just double checking to see if the cat was still there, no one needed to know.

The hallway leading to the kitchen’s back entrance, through the expansive pantry, always smelled good. Tonight it smelled like baking bread and chocolate, a rich, almost earthy smell that definitely meant Scotty was making dark chocolate filled croissants. And there were only three other people in the kitchen with him? Fuckin’ _score_. Travis was going to eat at least five and no one on earth would be able to stop him.

“TK!” Sanny’s voice boomed through the pantry before Travis even made it to the kitchen. “Don’t you _dare_ bring a cat in here!”

“He’s got a cat?” That was Scotty. Scotty _loved_ the Niche’s cats. Travis was pretty sure he’d given them all names, and there were at least twenty-odd cats that roamed around. “Is it Yerba?”

“No one knows your cat names, Laughts.” If there was a _loving the Niche’s cats_ spectrum, Sanny was on the exact opposite side of Scotty. He raised his voice again. “TK, I _swear_ —“

“Okay.” Travis poked his head into the kitchen, just to alleviate _this_ tension before introducing a whole _new_ kind of tension. Also, he was right; Scotty was leaning by the stove, a cooling rack of croissants beside him, another batch already in the oven, and Sanny, Provy, and Oskar were crowded on the stools by the island. Sanny and Provy were playing Knuckle Down with a tattered old set of cards and a cup of tokens, and Oskar had a thick book open in front of him and was taking detailed notes as he read. “I have a cat, but…”

“Get it out.” Sanny pointed at the closed door, one that led into the dining area and subsequent courtyard. Travis made a pleading noise.

“I need you guys’s help, okay?”

Oskar’s eyebrows furrowed as he marked his place in the book and looked up. His eyes were concerned already. “What’s going on?”

Travis fully entered the kitchen and the cat came along with him, sitting back on its haunches in the doorway like it didn’t want attention. _Since when?_ Travis thought as he gestured to it.

“Found it by the front door,” he said, and the cat hissed. “Okay, _it_ found _me_ , I guess.”

“He’s not one of ours,” Scotty said, leaning around the island to take a good look at the cat. “And _he_ , not _it_ , Travis. God, don’t be a degenerate.” He shucked off his apron and put down his spatula and bent down to examine the cat. Travis heard a little bit of muttered baby talk, but decided not to make a big deal out of it.

“Are you new?” Scotty asked the cat, and held out his hand. “Can I pick you up?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t—“ Travis started, but the cat butted Scotty’s hand in greeting and allowed himself to be picked up and cradled like a— Okay, Scotty was now holding the weird magical cat like a baby and _not_ laying on the floor with a grumbly voice yelling in his head. That was a thing that was happening. Scotty used his thumb to pet the cat’s forehead up between its (his?) ears, still mumbling sweet nothings as the cat—

Holy fuck. The cat was purring.

“Did you just get that damn thing to purr?” he asked.

Scotty looked at him like he was insane. “Lots of cats purr when I pet them, TK. Lots of cats purr when _you_ pet them. You’re acting like Sanny, what’s going on with you?”

“Both of you suck,” Sanny said from his seat at the island.

“Okay, so this is what happened,” Travis said, and, in the time it took him to down two chocolate croissants, told them about the cat, the voice, and the plea (scream? Demand?) for help. Oskar chewed on the end of his pen the whole time, and the cat kept on purring. Really undercutting the part of the story where it had mentally bullied him so loudly he’d fallen on his ass.

“ _That_ sounds like a Claude thing,” Provy said as soon as Travis finished (the story, and also his third croissant). “Did you ask him?”

“Yeah, Prov, we had a long talk about it in the time it took me to get yelled at by a cat and come find Oskar _immediately afterward_ ,” Travis shot back. Oskar beamed.

“You came here first?”

“’Course I did,” Travis said. Oskar put the pen behind his ear and held out his arms to Scotty and the cat. Reluctantly, Scotty placed the cat in his arms and Oskar tucked him right up to his chest. The cat laid his head on his shoulder and closed his eyes.

Oskar ran his head down the cat’s neck, regulating his breathing and closing his eyes, too. He’d done this exact thing to Travis hundreds of times before, letting both his cooling touch and his magic undo all the stress knots in his back and relieve the tension in his forehead. The cat looked like it was half-asleep, which Travis could also relate to.

Oskar hummed softly. “I don’t feel anything. He’s all jumpy and stressed, well, _was_ , but he seems calm now.” He gently handed the cat back to Scotty, who cuddled him for another minute before letting him lay on the counter. It looked like Oskar had really knocked him out for the count; he curled up and draped his tail down the middle of Oskar’s spellbook like a fluffy bookmark.

“Seems like a normal cat to me,” Oskar concluded, with a shrug aimed at Travis. “Sorry, TK.”

“Doesn’t mean he’s not weird, though,” Provy said, leaning across the counter to grab a croissant. “I still say talk to G about it.”

“Definitely talk to G about it,” Oskar said. “Maybe the cat latched onto you for some reason.”

Travis remembered how adamantly the cat tried to get inside the Niche’s front door when Travis offered to help him, and raised his eyebrows. “I really don’t think that’s it.”

“Well it needs a name,” Sanny said. “Laughts is good at that.”

“Make fun of me all you want, Sanny Boy,” Scotty said, “but I embrace all my talents.” He considered the cat and then poked the large bag of deep brown powder sitting among the rest of his baking ingredients. “How about Cacao? He showed up about the same time as these croissants, he’s brown, he’s sweet when you get to know him…”

Scotty trailed off as the rest of the room agreed with varying levels of enthusiasm. It _was_ a pretty good name, Travis thought, as far as cat names went, when the newly dubbed Cacao raised his head and fixed Travis with a devastating glare.

Potent rage knocked Travis back a few steps; he slammed into the counter and grabbed his head.

“Don’t—“ he managed to choke out. Oskar was at his side in an instant, supporting him as he slumped over. “Don’t name the cat.”

“Holy fuck,” Sanny said, and came up on Travis’s other side, lifting him up uncomfortably; their heights really weren’t compatible at all.

“What’d he say this time?” Provy asked as soon as Travis was able to lift his head again.

“Nothing.” Travis massaged his forehead. The cat had lowered its head, resting it on his front paws, and was still looking directly at Travis. It was disconcerting, but at least he wasn’t in _pain_ anymore. “He’s just pissed off.”

Scotty raised his eyebrows in a _huh_ expression and turned to the cat. “I apologize, no more names.” He crossed his heart.

“I’ll talk to Claude in the morning,” Travis said.

“That’s a good idea,” Provy said. Oskar nodded.

“Is it weird that none of you guys can hear it?” Travis asked. “Feel it? I don’t know. I’m kind of freaking out.”

“It’s probably not that weird,” Sanny said as he and Oskar led Travis to one of the stools and made him sit. Scotty slid another croissant across the counter to him as Provy filled a kettle with water. “Remember when Beezer turned orange but only he could see it? He thought he was going nuts until Jake made him drink that potion.”

“Or when Coots tried to grow worthand in the wrong soil and spoke gibberish for a week?” Provy laughed from his spot by the stove. “He thought he was fine, but all we heard was—“ Provy let out a string of, well, gibberish. Travis remembered that week; it had been funny at first, but Coots insisted on holding lessons anyway, and it quickly devolved into a nightmare.

“Point is, weird things happen.” Oskar scratched his nails across Travis’s hairline. “We’ll figure it out.”

Travis lowered his shoulders and breathed out. Took a bite of croissant. Breathed deep again.

“We’ll figure it out,” he repeated.

Provy’s kettle began to whistle, a lilting melody that petered out as he took it off of the stove and slid it onto a hot pad in front of Oskar. He gathered mugs from one of the cabinets; last year Claude and Raff had built a tiny pottery studio branching off of Claude’s potions lab, and most of their dishes were now hand-thrown, hand-glazed, hand-painted, and sometimes godforsaken ugly clay pieces. Claude was good at it, because of course he was, and the rest of them tried, for better or for worse. Throwing clay was fun, and oftentimes the pieces made by the others reflected _that_ part of the process more so than skill.

The creations usually still kept a tinge of their creator’s magic, and as Provy rooted through the cabinet he naturally emerged with a baby blue and gray mug made by Oskar, a lopsided half-midnight black dipped mug made by Scotty, a green vase-looking monstrosity made by Sanny, a delicate dark purple cup made by himself, and, finally, slid Travis’s favorite mug he’d made, a deep orange tankard mug that Claude had complimented and later tried to steal, into the space in front of him. He poured from the kettle into each mug, steam raising in curls to the dark ceiling. The cat stretched, kicking Oskar’s pen to the floor.

Forever ago, before Travis had come to the Niche, Jake had put some sort of spell on this particular kettle. Whatever came out of it was the tea its recipient needed most at the time, no teabag or sugar or milk necessary. Provy filled the orange mug and Travis immediately smelled mint and lavender. He grabbed for the mug and let it warm his hands for a heartbeat before taking his first sip; hot, but not _too_ hot— just enough of everything. He probably should have something other than chocolate croissants for dinner, but now he was all warm from tea and comfortable between Sanny and Oskar and he really didn’t want to move much at all for the rest of the night.

The kitchen drifted into silence as they all drank their tea and thought their thoughts. Scotty found some shredded chicken, leftover from someone’s dinner, and fed it to the cat before rooting in the cabinet for another, shallower mug and filling it with water. Oskar leaned over until his shoulder was pressed against Travis’s.

From there, the night progressed in pretty much the same way it had been before Travis introduced all of his cat drama. Sanny and Provy started a new game of Knuckle Down as Scotty started cleaning up his baking mess; Oskar gave Travis’s arm a squeeze before hopping off his stool to help him package up the rest of the croissants. _Breakfast tomorrow,_ Travis thought.

People drifted in and out. Raff came in and made himself a cup of hot chocolate before leaving with Scotty, Beezer wiggled his way into what was quickly turning into a full Knuckle Down tournament, Oskar took his book, picked his pen up off of the floor, and headed to bed. Through it all, the cat still lay on top of the island, accepting head pats and behind-the-ear scratches from every witch that passed him, and one very aggressive session of baby talk from Brauner, who was second only to Scotty in cat enthusiasm. No one screamed, no one fell on the ground. Maybe this cat just had a vendetta against Travis in particular for some reason. That would be dumb, he loved cats.

 _Maybe be mean to Sanny next time,_ he thought viciously towards the cat, who made no move to show he’d heard anything.

However, when he got off of his stool, rinsed his mug, and made to leave the kitchen, the cat stood up, stretched, jumped down from the island, and followed. _Huh_.

“Maybe you just need to know me better,” Travis said out loud as the cat followed him through a skinny, dimly lit hallway that wound around the kitchen and led back towards the center of the Niche. He’d thought about going to his room, but he wasn’t that tired yet. Maybe he’d head to the study cubicles over by fifth yard, do that spark conjuring he’d wanted to do before this whole cat fiasco started. He’d tire himself out, go to bed, and fix it all with Claude in the morning. _That_ sounded like a plan.

“Want to come with me and do some magic shit?” he asked the cat. No answer, but the cat still followed him as they walked, which Travis took as a _hell yeah, TK, I’m always up for watching you kill it at spark conjuring_.

“My name’s Travis, by the way,” he said. “Konecny. A lot of people here call me TK. And since you wouldn’t let Scotty give you a name back there, I hope you know I’m just going to refer to you as _cat_.” The cat _mrow_ ed. Travis cocked his head. That one actually sounded kind of encouraging. “How about Cat? Like, uppercase C. Kind of a name, kind of not.”

The cat’s eyes narrowed, like he was thinking about it, and then another _mrow_. A solidly affirmative noise.

“Cat it is.” Travis turned the a corner and opened the double doors leading to the outdoor corridor that cut through fifth yard, surprised to see lanterns already lit and someone, half obscured by shadows, pacing around in the grass. Travis let the doors close heavily after Cat had come through, loud enough that he wouldn’t catch anyone off guard. He squinted through the hazy darkness. “Hartsy?”

Carter flinched like he hadn’t heard Travis close the doors and raised his blindfold. _Whoops_. He waved a hand and the lanterns flared brighter.

“TK? What are you doing out here? Is that a _cat_?”

“Heading to the cubicles,” Travis said, climbing through one of the arched stone windows instead of walking through the entryway. Cat followed, jumping higher and faster than Travis thought he’d be able to. “Getting some more work in out here, or what?” There were foam rockets scattered all over the yard and Travis didn’t miss the way that Carter’s shoulders slumped, just slightly.

“Yeah, I guess.”

Travis gathered a few of the rockets and dumped them into the almost empty bin connected by a tube to a larger launcher than the ones Moose and Nisky had used that afternoon. It was set to _automatic_ , one launch every two seconds.

“This is all pretty intense, Hartsy.” Travis flipped up a rocket with his foot and kicked it into the bin. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s nothing.” Carter picked up a few rockets himself, slotting a few into individual launchers and dumping the rest into the bin. “It’s just… _Okay_ , you saw this afternoon, right? With the—“ He pantomimed ripping something in half.

“When you fuckin’ killed it during training?” Travis raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, Harts, we all saw it.”

“I can’t do it again,” he said, and _there_ , undercutting his voice, a tiny thread of heat. Carter didn’t get angry. Not at his defenders, not at Moose, and certainly not at himself, not that Travis had ever seen or heard about. “I’ve been out here trying for an hour, and I just—“ He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together, composing himself. There was a faint brush of pink across his cheeks and ears.

He took a deep breath.

“I don’t like flukes. I want to know exactly what I can do and how to do it better.”

Travis shrugged. “Want me to help you out? Two witches are better than one, or whatever the fuck that saying is.”

Carter frowned. “No offense, TK, but you aren’t a protector.”

“Yeah, but—“ Travis hefted one of the launchers and settled it on his shoulder. “I can _definitely_ shoot you with these damn things all day long and not get sick of it.” That actually made Carter crack a smile, and Travis grinned back. “And, hey. Maybe doing it in front of someone else will force it out.”

“Maybe,” Carter said, backed up until he was in position, and pushed the blindfold down over his eyes. “Okay, whenever you’re ready.”

Travis made sure the reloading enchantment was locked onto his particular launcher, and fired a test shot right at Carter’s head. A tiny square of the air shimmered, and the rocket stopped in its tracks, shuddered, and fell to the ground. Travis fired three more in quick succession, Carter stopped them all, but didn’t tear through any in the sheer display of power from that afternoon. It just wasn’t happening.

They stayed at it for about ten minutes, until Travis’s trigger finger actually started to hurt and beads of sweat rolled down Carter’s face as he blocked rocket after rocket.

“Maybe we should stop,” he yelled over the echoing _pow_ of the launcher.

“Keep going!” Carter’s voice was ragged.

Travis fired again, and as soon as he pulled the trigger, Cat let out an ear-splitting yowl from the doorway. A bolt of _aching_ shot Travis right in the center of his chest and he dropped to his knees, slamming his hand to his chest like he could physically stop the carving feeling tearing away at his insides. He huffed out a soft _fuck_ , bending over so far his forehead brushed the grass.

“TK?” Carter sounded far away, and also maybe underwater? It was hard to tell. “TK!”

Carter’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, holding him down, grounding him. He smelled clean, like rain. He hefted Travis in his arms, pressing his forehead into Travis’s hair.

And then, brief like a bad stomach cramp, the feeling was gone. Travis slumped against Carter’s chest, breathing loudly like he’d just run a mile.

“Sorry,” he said into his sweater.

“What happened?” Carter asked as he half-lifted Travis to his feet. “Did I do—“

“It wasn’t you, Harts, I promise.” Travis massaged his chest, but nothing felt weird or out of place. “Ever since this morning, I’ve been feeling. I don’t know. Weird.”

“Did you—“

“Yeah, Claude knows.”

 _He doesn’t know about_ you _, though,_ he thought, glancing over at the entryway were Cat still sat on his haunches, eyes locked onto Travis. Carter took his face in both of his warm hands and turned his head back and forth, like he was checking if Travis was still alive. Travis forced out a laugh and pushed him away.

“I’m fine, promise. Thanks, though— _holy shit.”_ He grabbed Carter by the shoulders and forced him to turn around. The last rocket he’d shot was torn in two, just like the one from that afternoon. “Check _that_ out.”

“It worked,” Carter breathed. Travis clapped him on the shoulder.

“You fuckin’ _rock_ , man.”

Carter’s face split into a huge grin as his hair flopped into his eyes. He pulled Travis closer, wrapping him in a hug. Travis could feel his heart racing.

“You should go to bed,” he said, for the second time that night, into Carter’s sweater. 

“Yeah.” As if to prove his point, Carter pulled back and let out a giant yawn, right into Travis’s face. “Gotta clean up this stuff, and then I can… Then I can…” Another yawn, and Travis bumped him with his hip. Together they gathered the rockets and dragged the bins and launchers into the small shed off of fifth yard. Travis ended up walking the whole way to Carter’s room with him; he’d started telling him about Cat (who was still adamant about following Travis), and Carter had a lot of thoughts, mainly about linking Cat to Travis’s weird chest feeling ( _but Cat showed up after that started happening_ , Travis argued) and about letting Claude know as soon as possible ( _I_ _already promised Oskar I’d tell him first thing in the morning,_ Travis insisted). 

Cat didn’t yell at Carter when he touched him, either, and Carter was probably one of the most magical witches Travis knew. Cat did the _opposite_ , and actually pressed further into Carter’s hand like he was looking for some extra affection. Travis crossed his arms as Carter and Cat said goodbye outside of his bedroom door, the one with the metal 79 in the same hallway as Kevin’s. 

“Let me know if Claude has any idea what’s going on,” Carter said, giving Cat one last scratch behind his ears. Travis promised that yes, Hartsy, as soon as he found out the exact cause of the Cat weirdness, he’d be the first (okay, maybe fourth) to know. 

“You like him a whole lot, huh?” Travis asked Cat as they headed up another flight of stairs to the hallway Travis’s room was in. Cat didn’t answer. 

Cat didn’t do much of anything after that, just jumped up onto the little bed Travis made up for him on the plush chair in the corner of his bedroom, curling up and laying his head down on top of his paws. His eyes followed Travis as he got ready for bed; took off his fleece and the shirt underneath, ran a comb through his tangled hair, ducked down into the hallway’s bathroom to brush his teeth. He changed his pants there, too. For some reason he felt like he shouldn’t change in front of Cat, like he was a new roommate and not, well, a cat.

When he returned to the room it looked like Cat was already asleep. He doused his big lamp and the few candles that had started burning when they’d first come in, and fell back into his bed. He whispered a spell and he heard his door’s lock click. Normally he had nothing against Oskar or Beezer or Sanny or whoever coming in his room in the middle of the night, but it was Cat’s first night in his room, and Cat was weird. It felt right to give him some privacy.

Travis made a nest for himself in his pile of blankets and arranged his two flat pillows just the way he liked them. The day’s exhaustion began seeping through his bones as he relaxed, and his eyelids felt like they were attached to bricks, drooping lower, and lower, and—

Travis opened his eyes. _Dreamspace_ , he thought, but this was a wide expanse of white nothing. This wasn’t his dreamspace. He also didn’t initiate this dreamspace, and that was the whole point of it. It was a meditation thing, a _get in your own head and calm the hell down_ thing. Was he in someone else’s dreamspace?

That wasn’t, like, a thing that could happen, was it?

He looked around. It seemed like he was in a giant white box, with blank walls, a blank floor, and nothing for what felt like miles and miles. He turned. _There—_ a tall mirror. What was a mirror doing in this dreamspace-that-definitely-wasn’t-Travis’s-dreamspace? 

Hell, he’d worked for years to curate his dreamspace into somewhere where he felt fully relaxed and at peace. His dreamspace had a lake and a cute little dock, for fuck’s sake. 

He approached the mirror. It took him a while to get there, and his footfalls started out soft, but grew louder and louder as he approached it. As he walked towards it, he could see his reflection, dark and fuzzy at first, brighten and sharpen. 

And _morph_.

With every step he took, the mirror changed his reflection. He grew taller, his shoulders broadened, his hair gained a few inches and a few more waves. By the time he was close enough to the mirror to touch it, he was looking at an entirely different person.

And an entirely different person was looking back at him.

His reflection-not-his-reflection tilted his chin. He had an angular, perfect jaw painted with a brush of stubble and the barest dusting on his upper lip. His hair fell in soft waves and, as Travis watched, he reached up impatiently to tuck a few errant strands behind his ear. He was blushing, or maybe his cheeks were always that pink. 

Dark brows hovered like a warning over storm-cloud eyes. Slate mountain eyes. Ocean colored eyes. Travis took a stumbling step back.

_Cat’s eyes._

“You’re Cat,” he choked out. He couldn’t hear himself talk. The dreamspace swallowed his words before they reached his ears. “What’s going on, what can I do?” 

The man, _Cat_ , opened his mouth to answer, and he, the mirror, and the unfamiliar dreamspace shattered into a thousand pieces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: g is tired, just like, as a rule.
> 
> i'm on twitter @thesedangers for hockey related rambling and also probably just rambling in general, you know how it goes.
> 
> -brie


	3. advice & accidents

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter brought to you by a snow day from work and the spotify playlist i started for this story, i'm officially in way too deep.

Travis was out of bed, out of his room, and halfway to Claude’s before his brain caught up to him. He skidded to a stop somewhere between a staircase and another staircase, leaned against a dusty tapestry hung to the wall, and tried to stop freaking out. If he barged into Claude’s room at —he paused, breathed, and felt for the time— _one forty-six in the morning_ , feeling like this, he’d be able to do nothing but scream and Claude would have to punt him out of his tower window to get him to shut up.

“It’s okay, Travis,” he told himself out loud as soon as he caught his breath. Himself didn’t listen; his heart rate sped up, if that was even humanly possible. He slumped to the ground and hid his head in his arms. Deep breath in, deep breath out. “What the _fuck_.”

What the fuck, indeed.

He’d spent a lot of time in dreamspace. AV, and by extension Claude, seemed to think he was pretty good at it, and he was often tasked with walking the less experienced witches through accessing dreamspace. Being _good_ at dreamspace wasn’t really a thing, he tried to explain, it was more about openness— having an open mind, being emotionally vulnerable, wearing a metaphorical heart on a metaphorical sleeve, all things he, well, was more than used to.

But, whatever. Being helpful with one small facet of magic was enough for him.

So, he’d spent a lot of time in dreamspace. And never, in his _entire life_ , had he even _heard_ about being in dreamspace with another person. It wasn’t possible. It was like being in another person’s head. It was the innermost core of them, where they, with time and training, could hide away to recharge, to calm down, to center and protect themselves.

And the weirder thing was that it hadn’t been _his_ dreamspace.

Travis ran both hands down his face. Every time he closed his eyes, that face… God, that _face_ — it was branded on the inside of his eyelids. The clenched jaw, the hard-set eyes, the blush red swept up both of his cheekbones like angel wings. If that dream-mirror-apparition man was actually Cat, if that was actually _his_ dreamspace and somehow _Travis_ had intruded, what in the actual fuck was that supposed to mean?

“Go talk to Claude,” Travis told himself firmly (he was _not_ having an existential crisis in this random hallway until he passed out), and this time he listened. Half-using the edge of the tapestry to heave himself off of the floor, Travis brushed off his knees and started climbing stairs again. There was something to be said about the panicked thoughts racing through his mind; he barely noticed his legs burning as he climbed, and he made it to Claude’s door in record time.

Claude lived in one of the Niche’s towers, affectionately known as _the Icicle_ , and honestly one of the coldest places throughout the entire compound. Claude always said he liked it; said it gave him an excuse to work on his heat conjuring. Travis thought that at least part of it was Claude liking the fact that he was able to make it his, the act of making the previously uninhabitable tower into his own little home. 

It was still cold as shit. Travis shivered as he braced himself on the oak frame and pounded on the door loud enough to wake people in downtown Volantes. 

The door opened a little too quickly. Travis figured Claude might know he was coming. Nothing much got past him, even at two in the morning.

“TK,” Claude said, in a way that meant _fuck you_. His eyes, stuck at half-mast, gave him a quick once over, and his ginger hair curled in a sleepy, ruffled sort of way that made Travis immediately feel bad for, well, all of this. He only had to remember the dreamspace to not feel bad anymore; Claude was his leader. This was exactly the kind of stuff he was supposed to help with.

“Hey, G,” Travis said. He was out of breath.

“It’s two in the morning.”

“Yeah, uh.” Travis twisted his hands together. “Something happened.”

Claude pushed open the heavy door with his foot, and gestured deeper into his room. A _come in, come in, tell me all of your woes_ gesture, but still with an undertone of _seriously, man, fuck you_. Travis started talking the second he crossed the threshold.

He told Claude everything, even rehashing the stuff from huddle the previous morning, the first time he’d felt the pain deep in his chest. Finding Cat on the stoop of the Niche, how Cat had screamed at him but not anyone else, how Cat and the chest pain seemed to be linked when he was with Carter in the fifth yard. And finally, sitting on a round velvet ottoman in front of the fire Claude had poked at the entire time he’d been talking, he told him about the dreamspace, the mirror, and the man with Cat’s eyes.

That made Claude put down his fire iron, pull up another ottoman, and look him in his eyes.

“Travis,” he said, in his Very Serious voice that he only used when things were Very Serious. (Frosty got it a lot, more than Travis did, now. Sanny, a few times in recent memory. He used it one very memorable time with Carter, who’d almost dug his own grave right then and there. Hartsy hated being wrong, but he hated being reprimanded even more.) 

“Yeah?” Travis answered.

“You were in someone else’s dreamspace?”

Travis picked up his own fire iron and began moving coals around just to give his hands something to do. Sparks twirled lazily up the tower’s chimney. 

“Yes,” he finally said, still watching the embers burn. “I don’t know how. I didn’t even know it was possible.”

“It’s not possible,” Claude said. “I’ve never heard of that before in my entire life, and I’ve been around the block a couple of times.” He stood, pushing his ottoman back with his foot, and scraped his hands through his hair to make it stand even more on end. “I have to talk to Coots and Raff about this, okay? I might have to take it to AV.”

He paused.

“And you’re sure about this?”

 _Because you’ll be in huge trouble if you’re lying_ hung unsaid in the air. Travis, however, had never been more sure of anything in his entire life. Somehow, seeing Cat in that mirror felt more tangible and real than Claude standing in front of him, than the sage-tinged smell of smoke in the air, than the stone floor cold even through his thick wool socks. _Help me_. His cutting gaze. The shattered dreamspace. 

“I have to do something about it,” Travis heard himself say, in a small voice that didn’t sound at all qualified to do anything about anything. This was huge magic, bigger than anything he’d ever been involved in. He believed in himself, like, for the most part. He could help Beezer access his dreamspace and perform a ritual and chant with Oskar and care for the crystals on his windowsill, no problem. He was good at being a witch. 

But _this?_

Claude ran both hands through his hair again, looking like he wanted to argue, but Travis steeled his jaw and felt the stubbornness set and settle through his bones. Cat came to _him_ for help— well, kind of. He was the one who was given the order, _help me_. He was the one who was dragged into Cat’s dreamspace for whatever reason.

For _some_ reason. 

“I have to do something about it,” he repeated, stronger, more confident. Claude shook his head like it was either too late at night or too early in the morning to deal with all of this. Well, he was the one who decided he wanted to lead a group of mostly dysfunctional witches, so. Maybe a bad decision on his part. One that meant some late nights, for sure. 

“Let me at least see the cat,” Claude said. Travis jumped off of his ottoman. 

“He’s in my room,” he said, and Claude let him out the door first. “We tried to name him earlier, well, Laughts did, but he hated being given a name, I think. I’ve referred to him as Cat this whole time, you know, with a big C, and he seems okay with that.”

“Fantastic,” Claude said in a way that meant the opposite.

They wound down the tower’s staircase and Claude led the way through the Niche’s maze of hallways and secret passages until they made it back to Travis’s room with the metal 11 on the still-open door. Travis caught Claude’s look and shrugged.

“I kinda sprinted out of here earlier.”

Travis poked his head through the opening and looked around for Cat. One by one candles winked into light, each of their flickering beams illuminating the same damning scene— Cat was nowhere to be found.

“I left him right here.” Travis gestured to the chair in the corner before looking under it. He tossed all of his blankets onto the rug, peered under his bedframe, shuffled all his pillows around. No Cat.

Claude peeked into Travis’s tiny fireplace like Cat was halfway up the chimney no bigger than both of Travis’s hands. 

“He’s a big cat, G,” Travis said. Claude came out of the fireplace with soot on his forehead.

“He must have left the room. Maybe he went looking for you?”

“Maybe.”

Travis must have looked more twitchy than usual, because Claude came up beside him, made him sit down on the bed, and put one arm around his shoulders. 

“This is weird,” he said, and pulled Travis closer, “but come on. Magic is fickle, sometimes it doesn’t like to be understood or contained. Patience and persistence, right? All of us will take on this new weirdness together, like we always do.”

“Big sap,” Travis muttered into his chest. Claude squeezed tighter, if that was even possible.

“Shut up, Konecny.”

He let go and stood, holding out his hand for Travis to take it. He did, and Claude yanked him to his feet and wrapped him in a real hug, allowing the warmth from his body to seep into Travis’s. Claude’s magic smelled like firewood smoke and summer afternoons, and Travis ignored the beard hairs prickling against his forehead as he breathed deep and felt his heart rate slow.

“There we go,” Claude said, and stepped back, one hand already on the doorknob. “The cat will turn up. if not tonight, then tomorrow. And if he doesn’t, we can sic Lindy and Laughts on him, right?”

Oskar’s locating magic was unparalleled, and Scotty, well. If there was a cat to find, Scotty would find it.

Travis grinned. “Sounds like a plan, G.”

The corner of Claude’s beard twitched upward before he saluted and left Travis’s room, closing the door quietly behind him. There was a pause, and the door opened a crack again.

“For the cat,” Travis heard Claude say.

He sat back down on his bed and listened as Claude’s footsteps faded. He did feel better. Tomorrow was a new day, a day for advice from Coots and information from Raff and an examination of Cat. _If Cat comes back._ Travis shook his head. Cat had to come back. He was the one that needed help. He was the one haunting Travis, not the other way around.

The candles extinguished themselves as Travis gathered his blankets and pillows and rearranged both them and himself on the bed again. The open door was creepy, letting in a slice of dim light from the hallway. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t want Cat to come back, at least not into his room at nighttime. The last thing he wanted was to be pulled into another dreamspace incident against his will.

Fifteen minutes passed of just him staring at the door before he kicked off his blankets in frustration. There was no way he was going to fall asleep with the Cat mystery and the dreamspace threat and, just, all of it hanging over him like one of Claude’s heavy cauldrons hanging from the ceiling in the kitchen. Balanced precariously on a rusty old hook like one bump in the wrong space on the wall would send everything crashing down.

He looked back down at his bed, felt the tiredness sparking behind his eyes, and made up his mind. Leaving the door open wider, just in case Claude was right and Cat really was just out looking for him, he shrugged Kevin’s fleece back on, balled his favorite blanket (Moose had knit it for him last Winter Solstice out of thick gray yarn) in his arms, and went down the hall.

He left his door unlocked more often than not, but Oskar’s door was never locked. He scratched his fingernails on the wood lightly anyway, just as a precaution, before nudging the door open.

Three blanket covered lumps were vaguely outlined in the dim light. As he walked further in a single candle winked into flame, bathing the whole room in a low, buttery glow. Frosty, sprawled on the rug with his mouth hanging open, still had a faint grayish aura hanging around him. A bad dream, probably, and he’d relocated to Oskar’s floor instead of staying in his room a few hallways over. The residue seemed rough enough that he’d have to talk to Jake about it, maybe down a potion before tomorrow morning’s huddle. Oskar was curled up on his bed, wrapped in a blanket, and Beezer was closer to his feet, taking up a large part of the remaining open space and most of the remaining blankets. 

Travis stepped up onto a green velvet ottoman and onto the bed, maneuvering across various tangled limbs and pillows until he was able to squeeze into the space between the wall and Oskar’s top half. Beezer shifted until he was covering most of Travis’s legs. It didn’t matter all that much; he was warm at least. Travis leaned back to grab a pillow and laid down fully, feeling comfortable and safe and the farthest away from unfamiliar dreamspaces he could be.

Oskar cracked open one eye and regarded him in the dim light.

“Everything okay, Teeks?” His voice sounded sleep-blurred, and he leaned forward until their foreheads brushed. 

“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” Travis whispered back, and willed the candle to extinguish.

Darkness covered the room, and Travis sank into sleep so slowly that he didn’t know exactly when it happened. He didn’t dream.

*****

The next morning, he woke up in the worst possible way; someone yanking the summer-warm blanket right off of him. He yelped, his eyes still closed, as the cold air replaced his sleep cocoon, and grabbed blindly for the blanket.

“Come on, what the _fuck—_ ” 

A laugh. _Bee_. Oh, yeah— the Cat incident, the dreamspace, talking with G, falling asleep in Oskar’s bed… Travis cracked open one eye to glare. Yup, that was Beezer, holding his blanket and still chuckling to himself, as Oskar shrugged on a sweater in the opposite corner. Frosty was nowhere to be found. 

Oskar cuffed his sleeves, snatched the blanket from Beezer, and tossed it back overtop Travis.

“Come on,” he said, “Huddle’s in twenty, and I want breakfast.”

Travis kicked off the blanket and sat up, scraping his hair out of his face and rubbing his eyes. He needed a shower, but breakfast sounded way too good to pass up. Maybe if he rushed… But Cat was still missing, and he should probably hunt for him before G talked to Coots and Raff. Priorities. Food first, for sure. Maybe a quick shower. He should’ve woken up earlier.

He let out a huge yawn.

Who was he kidding, he wouldn’t have woken up earlier.

He walked to breakfast between Oskar and Bee, half-listening to them talk about the candles Oskar had requested from Provy and the design he wanted to attempt to carve into them later in the day. Bunny’s birthday was coming up soon, too, and Travis caught a bit of a back-and-forth about what to give him. The kitchen was already full and bustling; a good number of the Niche’s witches were morning people, and, as he got into the breakfast line, Travis wholeheartedly wished the general idea of _morning people_ would go fuck itself. 

Sanny moved past him with a steaming bowlful of something and handed him a hot mug before heading out to the covered greenhouse courtyard. No smile, no greeting, just a mug full of coffee. _That’s_ the morning interaction Travis wanted. Other Travis just _got_ him. 

He sipped his coffee, allowed JVR to dish him a bowl of oatmeal, put some blueberries, hazelnut chocolate spread, and a handful of granola on top, and took it all out to the courtyard. He sat across from Sanny, and the two of them ate in silence and woke up at their own pace, allowing the warm breakfast and strong coffee to work its magic. Once he was pretty much upright and as awake as he was going to be at eight fifteen in the morning, Kevin bounded over to join their table, Provy and Ghost scooted down the bench on either side of the table, and even Carter stopped by for a while while they were arguing whether or not Sanny liking his oatmeal fully drowned in maple syrup was disgusting or not— verdict: uh, _yeah_. By the time the bells rang for eight thirty huddle, Travis’s bowl was empty and he actually felt ready to face the day. He looped his arm through Sanny’s and pulled him off the bench, ignoring his protests as he headed for the sacrarium. They bumped shoulders as they walked, ribbing each other and throwing insults back and forth, but as soon as they stepped onto the stone threshold they fell silent and broke apart.

The Niche’s sacrarium was in the very center of the compound, an ancient space carved out of speckled gray stone. It was circular inside, with large silver discs carved into the moon’s phases embedded into the wooden floor. Normally the heavy velvet curtains were held back by iron hooks jutting from the walls, but during huddle they were always drawn, cocooning the area in a hazy gray twilight. In the very center of the floor a few witches were already sitting in a not-yet-completed circle, as Raffl set up candles. A soft breeze through the still-open main doors made incense smoke swirl toward the domed ceiling, and Travis grabbed a cushion from the stack closest to him and made his way to the center of the room.

He set his cushion down between Kevin and Frosty –in the candlelight he could see that he grabbed one of the deep maroon embroidered ones that Moose had made a few years back— and got comfortable. Kevin passed him a candle and he set it in front of his cushion, relaxing his shoulders and trying to steady his breathing.

This was always the hardest part of huddle, for him, at least. The immediate focus to let everything outside the sacrarium fall away, to let his mind settle and still the moment he sat down in the circle, was a talent he still hadn't fully developed. Frosty hadn't either; it seemed like every other second he'd twitch and his candle flame would spark.

Travis shook his head slightly and focused on his candle flame. When he breathed out it shrank, when he breathed in it grew, the tip of the flickering flame reaching upwards to the ceiling like an outstretched hand. Sanny caught his eye, all the way across the circle, and he pulled a face at the exact same time Travis did. Both of their candles went out.

“Fuck,” Travis whispered, and saw Sanny laughing until he saw that, _yeah_ , his candle was out too. Travis closed his eyes, breathed in, and felt the familiar little spark of energy between his thumb and pointer finger. When he opened his eyes again, his candle was re-lit. Out of habit, he glanced to his left, to the space in the circle farthest away from the double-door entrance. Claude’s eyes were closed, his candle flame completely still, but his eyebrow was raised in a very _you better believe I know what’s going on_ sort of way. Coots was beside him, a picture of serenity. Travis wondered if Claude had told him about Cat yet, and if he’d still be that calm if he knew what was going on. _Probably_.

Travis re-focused on his candle flame, steadying his breathing and listening to the steady _thud_ of his heart as the flame still shifted. Beside him, Kevin’s flame was barely moving, almost as still as Claude’s, undisturbed by his heavy breathing. Travis thought about poking him to see if he was asleep. He kind of _looked_ asleep.

Travis’s candle flickered out again.

 _God fucking damn it_ , he thought, and lit it again.

This was all Cat’s fault, probably. Now that all of the comfortable tiredness from the morning was all melted away, he felt jittery, like he could run a few laps on the path around the Niche’s boundaries and still have pent up energy built up inside him. Like, he didn’t _want_ to be thinking about dreamspace and the gilded frame of that mirror and the way that man with Cat’s eyes had tucked his hair behind his ear, the way the blush on his cheeks deepened, the way his gray-blue-green eyes flashed as he tilted his chin to look Travis in his eyes.

He looked down, even though he didn’t want to. _Yup_. The candle was out. A wisp of smoke curled towards the ceiling like a taunt.

 _At least my fire conjuring’s getting a workout this morning,_ Travis thought kind of bitterly as he re-lit the candle for what felt like the millionth time. It didn’t matter, though, because now everyone was opening their eyes and candles were winking out all around the circle as Coots stood and dragged his cushion to the middle of the circle.

Everyone took turns leading huddle, sometimes in guided meditations, sometimes in affirmations, sometimes in breathing exercises or stretches or salutations. Most of the time it rotated between the older or more experienced witches, but at least once a week the younger members of the Niche would be asked to lead. This was Coots’ second time leading in a row; he must be feeling strong, have something good going on. Travis’s last time leading huddle had been a few weeks prior, and he’d been so proud when it went well. Even Jake had complimented his affirmations, and Travis would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about that at least once a day since it happened.

“Eyes closed,” Coots said, and Travis rearranged his legs on the cushion before taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. “I want everyone to picture themselves in this room, right now, wherever you’re at, with no one else around. It’s only you.”

 _Only me_ , Travis thought. Alone in his own head. Alone with his thoughts. Banish the thoughts. Just him. Alone. Breathe in, breathe out. Be quiet, stop thinking about things out of your control. Breathe. Be alone.

“Picture a sphere around yourself.” Coots’ voice wove its way throughout the room. “A barrier. The only things that can get through are positive things— good thoughts, good feelings. Visualize positivity entering your personal sphere.”

 _Good things_ , Travis thought. His barrier shimmered in his mind's eye, soft and muted at first, but as he focused it grew stronger, more opaque. It glowed orange. _I can figure this whole Cat thing out. I know it’s weird, but everything will be okay. I am capable. I am protected._

He felt his shoulders start to relax, a tightness between his eyes loosening that he hadn’t even noticed until it started to unravel.

“Visualize any bad energy exiting your sphere,” Coots said. He sounded far away, like he was speaking through a wall. “Nothing negative can stay. It doesn’t belong.”

 _I am protected,_ Travis thought again, and visualized all the confusion, all the stress, all the disturbance he’d been trapped in over the past twenty-four hours as pieces of broken glass around his head. One by one, they blurred and were sucked through his shimmering barrier, gone. He breathed in, and dragged the barrier’s energy closer to him. His sphere got smaller and smaller, siphoning all of its warmth into Travis’s body.

He felt _good_. Light as air. Inside the sphere felt like his dreamspace, a place just for him.

The barrier shimmered, and an object, too bright for his mind to comprehend what it was, entered his sphere. It approached his crossed legs and he felt the softest touch on his knee.

_Travis?_

His eyes flew open. The orange sphere around him hung around in reality for a heartbeat before it fizzled and disappeared; and Travis looked down at Cat, who still had a paw on his knee. He felt warm, like his sphere had been before it melted away, not painful like the first time they’d touched. It was a welcome change, but _still_.

“You can’t be in here,” Travis said, _out loud_ , and immediately clapped both hands over his mouth.

On either side of him, Kevin’s sphere and Frosty’s sphere both crackled and broke, and throughout the circle, most other peoples’ did, too. Only Claude’s and Coots’ spheres stayed intact. Moose cracked open one eye and glared like someone had just woke him up, and Kevin breathed out heavily like he was breaking the surface and coming up for air.

“The _fuck_ , TK, I was in the _zone!”_

The serene atmosphere shattered as everyone began talking at once, and with a wave of his hand Claude made his sphere vanish and stood in one fluid moment.

“Be quiet!” His voice boomed throughout the sacrarium, and everyone listened. Kevin made a locking-lips movement with his hand and then sat on both of them. Coots’ sphere finally dissipated, and he came out of it looking a little bit like he’d gotten lost in his own exercise and forgot the rest of them even existed. He dragged his cushion back to his original spot as Claude crossed the circle to get to Travis.

“Is that him?” he asked, obviously about Cat, who had turned around to sit very primly between Travis and Kevin. As soon as he caught sight of Cat, Kevin lit up.

“Oh, sweet, what’s up little man?” he asked, half-turning around to pet Cat, who shied away immediately, backing up until he was against a stack of cushions. “ _Whoa,_ it’s okay, I don’t bite.”

“Hayes, don’t touch the cat,” Claude said, a wrinkle of visible annoyance clear between his eyebrows. “Konecny, is he going to kill me if I pick him up, or will he follow me?”

“Don’t pick him up,” Travis said, and then looked back at Cat. “Go with G, okay? He’s going to figure out what’s going on.” Cat tilted his chin –a lot like his mirror counterpart— but padded to the door anyway. Claude turned to help Jake up, and motioned to Coots and Raffl.

“It’s time.”

So they _had_ talked about it. Travis watched as the group of four veteran witches followed Cat out of the sacrarium, flinching when Kevin reached over and slapped the back of his head.

“Shit, Kev! _What?”_

“What’s going on with that cat?”

“Nothing,” Travis said, and rolled his eyes because _duh_ , of course it was something. “I’ll tell you all about it when G tells _me_ all about it, okay?”

“Deal.” Kevin bumped his fist against Travis’s, and heaved himself up off the floor.

 _I really need to stop promising to drag people into all of this Cat drama,_ Travis thought as he, too, stood and picked up his cushion. He got in line behind Kevin to stack his cushion by the door. He’d promised Carter last night, he promised Oskar that morning… _Actually_. Travis looked around. _There—_ Oskar was across the room, his area already all cleaned up and put away, and he was talking to Nisky and Moose. Travis balanced his cushion on top of Kevin’s head and ducked through the crowd.

Coming up behind Oskar, he poked him in the side. “Got a sec?”

Oskar jabbed him with his elbow before answering some question Moose had asked, promised to ask Jake about something to do with sage and twine, and backed out of the conversation in a gracious way that really only Oskar could pull off. He then rounded on Travis.

“You really don’t know what manners are, do you?”

Travis grinned. “I have you for that, Osky. Again, I ask— got a sec?”

“For what?”

“Me?”

Oskar rolled his eyes and then, like sunshine, a grin lit up his face.

“Of course.”

Travis grinned back and poked him in the ribs again. “Okay, but let’s just—” He cupped his hands to amplify his voice “ _Sanny!”_ Sanny raised his head from where he was kneeling beside Beezer, organizing candles in Nisky’s big wooden box, and caught Travis’s eye. Travis gestured frantically until Sanny stood and meandered over to them— for someone with legs as long as his, Sanny really fuckin’ _meandered_ when he wanted to. 

“What’s goin’ on?” he asked.

“You want to know what’s going on with Cat?” Travis asked. Both of their faces lit up. News, including news that shouldn’t really be news, traveled fast around the Niche. Being privy to information before it was _public_ information was rare. “Come on, I want to try something.”

Oskar and Sanny followed him as he left the sacrarium and practically sprinted the few staircases up to his room. They both settled on the rug as he dug through his drawers and rifled through the tall bookcase that took up all of his right wall, piling jars and crystals and one pot full of sage precariously in his arms.

“TK, what the hell are you doing?” Sanny asked.

Travis dumped his armful of, well, _stuff_ in the center of their little triangle on the rug. “I want to try something.”

“You said that already,” Oskar said.

“Okay, so you know dreamspace?” Travis asked. They both _hmm_ ed noncommittally, because _duh_. “So last night Cat was in here when I fell asleep, right? And I ended up _in his dreamspace_.” 

“In that cat’s dreamspace,” Sanny said flatly, like Travis was an idiot.

“He’s a guy,” Travis argued. “At least, I think it’s him. They got the same eyes, dreamspace guy and Cat.”

Oskar picked up a particularly large piece of quartz and passed it back and forth between his hands. “There was a man in the dreamspace?” 

“Yeah, I mean, kinda,” Travis said. “I fell into the dreamspace, it was a big blank area, like blinding white, and there was a really tall mirror in this gold frame. When I looked into it, it was like I _was_ this guy, he was taller than me—”

“No kidding,” Sanny muttered, and Travis threw a pillow at him.

“And he had this long hair and these wild eyes that looked _exactly_ like Cat’s,” he continued. “So I asked him what was going on, but when he opened his mouth to answer me, everything burst into these, like, _shards_ and I woke up.”

“And you’re sure it wasn’t just a bad dream?” Oskar asked.

“It wasn’t a dream, it was _dreamspace_. I felt it.”

“How on earth did you get into someone else’s dreamspace?” Sanny asked. Travis pointed at him.

" _That’s_ what I want to try.”

Oskar frowned. “Absolutely not. We don’t _know_ this magic, TK. Anything could happen.”

“G and Coots are looking into it, right?” Sanny asked. “That’s where the cat is now, right? With them?”

“And Raffl and Jake.”

“So that’s that, then. They do their thing, figure out what’s weird about the cat, and we go on with our lives, right?”

“ _Or_ ,” Travis drug it out into at least five syllables, “we cut out the middle man and test the dreamspace thing for ourselves, right here and right now.”

Sanny crossed his arms. “I suck at dreamspace, so why the hell am I here?”

Travis pushed the jar of sage towards him. “You’re here to drag us out of it in case something goes south.” Dreamspace was an interesting magic to learn, and oftentimes unsupervised witches could get stuck. Their bodies would look like they were sleeping, but their essence would be caught in a sort of dreamspace limbo. Burning sage under the nose was a quick remedy for that; Travis had been jolted awake by his dreamspace spotter too many times to count when he was first learning. 

Oskar also crossed his arms, same position as Sanny. “And what if I say no?”

Travis made big pleading eyes and aimed them right at him. “ _Osky—_ ” 

“This is _stupid,_ Teeks—”

“Come on,” Travis said, and pushed his leg. “When have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Like fifty different times,” Oskar muttered, but still put the crystal back in the pile and got comfortable on the floor. “This _week_.”

“There we go,” Travis said encouragingly as he constructed a circle around both him and Oskar, using pink salt, rosemary, and amethyst chunks to build the barrier. Normally, there was no need for barriers or any kind of protection magic, really, but Oskar was right. This was unknown magic, to them at least, and there was no harm in being on the safe side. 

Travis finished the circle and sat down inside it, across from Oskar. Sanny hovered on his knees over Oskar’s shoulder like he didn’t want to get too comfortable. 

“How are we supposed to do this?” Oskar asked.

“Go to your dreamspace,” Travis said, trying his best to mask the fact that he actually had _no idea_ how they were supposed to do this. “I’ll go to dreamspace, too, but I’ll… Think about you? I guess?”

“Romantic,” Sanny interred from behind Oskar’s head, and Travis thought long and hard about hucking a crystal at him. 

Oskar shrugged. “I guess we can try that.” He crossed his legs and straightened his shoulders before taking a deep breath. A breeze swept through the room, rustling the rosemary on the floor. Travis had known Oskar long enough to know when he’d entered his dreamspace, and knew that, _yeah_ , it happened that fast. They practiced together, their times were a point of personal pride.

 _It’s not a race._ He could _hear_ Coots’ voice in his head.

 _Yeah, it fuckin’ is,_ he thought back, and got settled. He closed his eyes and fell backward into his dreamspace; a familiar patch of grass, blue sky dotted with puffy clouds, a wide expanse of lake. He lay on his back in the grass and let the sun warm his face for a heartbeat before closing his dreamspace-self’s eyes, too.

 _Oskar_ , he thought. He visualized a thread tying their bodies together, back in his room in the Niche. He pulled on the thread once, and felt a tug somewhere deep in his mind. A little bit of resistance. 

The tail-end of a breeze swept across his face. Clean laundry. A bright, happy smell. _Oskar_. 

_Yes!_ He was so close, Travis could feel it. He was going to figure this weirdness out all on his own, he was going to take his findings to Coots and Claude and they’d be able to understand what was going on with Cat, he was going to help, he was going to be _great—_

“Come _on_ ,” he grunted, and took the thread in both hands and _pulled._

A scream tore through his dreamspace, and it was like the sound pushed him back into reality. The circle was broken, amethyst and salt scattered all over the floor. Sanny knelt over Oskar, who’d been knocked flat on his back, a thin line of blood leaking from his right nostril, unconscious.

*****

Travis paced outside of his own bedroom door, feeling like absolute shit.

Oskar was fine, or _would_ be fine as soon as the potion Jake had forced him to drink began to work. He was still in Travis’s room. Sanny had moved him to the bed as Jake, most likely summoned by the sheer terror emanating from room eleven, showed up with a crate of ingredients and his gigantic mortar and pestle and got down to business. Travis had been pacing in the room, distracted by Oskar cocooned in his favorite blanket, pale as a new snowfall, but Jake had forced him to leave.

Not only had his dreamspace plan not worked to a horrific extent, but he’d _hurt_ Oskar.

He’d hurt _Oskar._

The scream that echoed through his dreamspace now echoed through his head, mocking him, almost. Oskar hadn’t even wanted to do it. Oskar had trusted him. Oskar was now flat on his back in Travis’s bed, his eyes moving restlessly under closed lids, as Jake shoveled foul-smelling potions down his throat and Sanny held him down. 

Travis leaned against the cold stone wall and allowed his body weight to pull him to the floor, where he hunched over his knees and just sat. He wasn’t ever getting up. Definitely not until Oskar was able to. _Why’d you have to be such a fucking idiot?_

It wasn’t until he heard a huff of laughter that he realized he’d said that out loud.

A warm body sat next to him, pressed close, and draped an arm across his shoulder. It smelled like mint and earth. _Coots_. 

“TK,” he started.

“I _know_ ,” Travis bit out, a little harsher than he’d meant to.

“I know about Oskar,” Coots went on, “but that’s not why I’m here. You’ll have to answer to Jake and G about that one.”

That made Travis raise his head. “Why’re you here, then?”

“Cat,” Coots said simply, and Travis’s heart started beating faster.

“Yeah?”

Coots shook his head, a shock of ginger hair flopping over his eyes and shifting with the movement. “Nothing.”

“ _Nothing_ meaning…”

“There’s nothing,” Coots said. “No part of him is magical. He’s a normal cat, Travis.”

Everything went cold. Travis clenched his fingers into fists as he tried to comprehend what Coots had just said. 

“A normal cat who screamed at me,” he began slowly, and built up steam as he continued. “A normal cat who dragged me into his dreamspace, _a normal cat_ who broke my barrier this morning and _said my name_ —” 

“I tried,” Coots cut him off. “Raff tried, Jake tried, hell, G tried twice. There’s nothing magical about that cat, Travis, and now whatever happened with Oskar—”

“I’ll fix that,” Travis managed to grate out.

“You _caused_ it.” Coots shook his head, stood, and offered Travis a hand. He didn’t take it. He didn’t deserve to take it, and besides, he’d told himself he’d sit by this door until Oskar walked out of it and forgave him _himself_. Coots wiggled his hand like he wanted Travis to stand up and stop being so stupid, but he’d never say that out loud. “There are a few spells we could test out on you, see if you’ve been cursed or hexed or anything nasty. Volantes is at peace, sure, but enemies are always looking for weakness.”

 _Weakness._ Travis shrank back against the wall as Coots, who realized what he’d said, knelt down and put both hands on Travis’s shoulders.

“I didn’t mean it like that. You’re _fine_ , TK. You hear me? Accidents happen, witches meddle with stuff. Oskar is on the mend, G already found a few spells that might help, and, as of right now, AV knows nothing about it. Now let me help you up.”

This time, when Coots held out his hand, Travis took it. Coots pulled him to his feet.

“This is all magic is, okay?” he said. “Experimentation and pushing limits and trying new things. But _maybe_ it’s also consulting your vets before you do something dangerous, all right? It’s kind of what we’re here for.”

Travis actually managed a tiny little tight-lipped smile. “Thanks, Coots.”

Coots bumped him. “Come up to Jake’s after you get some lunch, okay? There’s some tests we can run to figure out if there’s a curse situation we should be worried about.”

“Will do,” Travis said, and Coots ducked into his room.

 _Not here for Oskar, my ass,_ Travis thought kind of bitterly as he kicked a tassel on the carpet beneath his feet and thought about sitting back down. He didn’t want to go get lunch, even though his stomach was rumbling and he was pretty sure it was Moose’s turn to cook, and Moose made some _awesome_ chili. He didn’t want to go and navigate people asking questions about Oskar and what they’d been trying to do and why _he_ was okay, but Oskar ended up hurt. He’d go crazy.

Accidents happened around the Niche all the time, sure, but the blame for this one rested heavy on his shoulders and his shoulders alone. And now that Cat was _normal_ —

The back of Travis’s nose burned as he swiped the back of his hand underneath it. _God_. What was wrong with him? Was he really cursed? All it took was a cry for help and a pretty-eyed man in a dream? Travis shoved his hands in his pockets and started off towards the floor beneath his, where the big bathroom with all the showers was. His stuff was back in his room, but there was always a stack of clean, generic towels and random soaps and scrubs in the closet down there. Maybe he’d duck into Kevin’s often unlocked bedroom and snag another fleece, and maybe a shower would be exactly what he needed to clear his head.

Ahead of him, he watched as a blur bolted around the corner— _oh, shit._ It was Cat. Travis held out a hand.

“Hey, don’t come closer—“

Cat didn’t slow down, but kept going anyway, straight at him. As he ran, the hallway bent and warped and blurred, and Travis stumbled as it curved suddenly and threw him to his knees. When he raised his head again, everything was white. _Dreamspace_.

 _Fuck_.

“Listen, I don’t know what the hell kind of curse this is,” Travis yelled as he clambered to his feet, “but I’m just about fuckin’ sick of it!”

His words echoed. _That_ was new. Last time he hadn’t even been able to hear himself speak.

“It’s not a curse.” A voice came from behind him, a deep, earthquake-rumble sort of voice. The same voice that had screamed at him for help, the same voice that had said his name as a question during huddle that morning. Travis whirled around again, almost falling back on his ass again, but managing to stay upright.

“ _You’re_ —“

The man from the gilded mirror stood in front of him, only a few paces away. There was no mirror this time, and he was dressed mostly in black; socks, pants, jacket. His shirt was a dark green, and for some reason he wasn’t wearing shoes.

“We don’t have time,” he cut him off. His eyes — _shit_ they were intense— bore into Travis like he could see right into his soul. “Full moon, make a circle out of black salt on an obsidian slab and burn saffron crocus. Make sure I’m in the circle with you. That’ll let us talk for real.”

“Saffron crocus—“ Travis tried to start again.

“It’s already started,” Cat snapped back, and it was true. The dreamspace was beginning to melt, sinking and pooling around Travis’s ankles like chocolate on high heat. “Black salt, obsidian, saffron crocus _. Full moon_. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Travis said, and tried to walk towards him, but it was like trying to move in quicksand. “Cat—“

“My name isn’t _Cat_ ,” he interrupted again as the dreamspace melted fully, dragging Travis, himself, and his voice along with it. Travis felt himself being pulled slowly downward, descending back toward his body in the Niche. He took a deep breath, just in case, before the melted dreamspace covered his face. The man’s final words followed him down, echoing in his ears, deep and grumbly and impossibly soft.

_My name is Patrick._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: tk? in a library? just let it happen.
> 
> thank you for reading!! i'm on twitter @thesedangers for hockey talk (ie: screaming), you know how it is.
> 
> -brie


	4. punishment & possibility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i hope you're ready for a little sprinkle of Universe Lore!!

Moose made the best chili in the world, but Travis couldn't taste it.

He was _eating_ it, sure. Like, moving the spoon from the bowl to his face, going through the motions. If anyone had been in the kitchen, they’d see him sitting alone on a stool at the counter and say _oh, there’s TK eating some chili._ But he was barely paying attention to the actual act of eating it, let alone enjoying the taste. He was moving on autopilot, completely zoned out.

_Patrick, Patrick, Patrick…_

He’d come out of that dreamspace in a haze, a fog of his own thoughts so thick that he’d made it to the floor beneath his, out of his clothes, and into the shower before he’d even noticed he was moving. The warm water hitting his face had been enough to jolt him back to semi-reality, but even that wasn’t enough to get him fully out of his own head.

_Patrick, Patrick, Patrick…_

A scrap of paper sat next to his half-empty chili bowl, a frantically scribbled list he’d written as soon as he’d gotten into the kitchen. In his barely legible handwriting, between water stains from his still wet hair: _full moon, obsidian slab, black salt/circle, saffron crocus (burn)._ He’d started to write something about getting _Ca— Patr—_ the _cat_ in the circle with him, but crossed it out before finishing. This was all too weird and new to even think about doing something so normal as writing it down.

_Patrick._

Travis shoveled the rest of the chili into his mouth before taking his empty bowl to the sink. After rinsing his dishes and balancing them precariously on top of the pile on the drying rack (that was _somebody’s_ chore, and for once it wasn’t on him to put away dishes), he grabbed his scrap of paper and headed for the library. As he walked he felt for signs of life; mostly everyone was outside enjoying the day, tending to the gardens or training in one of the Niche’s many yards or down by the lake. One painful twinge told him that Oskar was up in the Lookout with him and Bee, awake but miserable. He needed to apologize, tell Oskar that he’d been stupid for not listening to him in the first place. Soon. When Jake wasn’t hovering like a prickly, ginger mother hen.

Travis let out a heavy sigh as he turned a corner. Life had been so much easier two days ago, when he’d only have slight twinges of pain in his chest and not huge, gaping holes. When the Niche’s cats didn’t talk to him or trap him in blank, white dreamspaces. When he’d just had a lingering feeling of not being good enough, like a phantom limb, not the glaring proof of Oskar in the medical tower.

And the worst part was, he was going to do it again.

What Cat _—Patrick—_ had told him to do was what he’d done with Oskar; meddle with magic he didn’t know. He had no idea what obsidian and black salt and the full moon had to do with each other, and he didn’t even know where to _find_ saffron crocus. He’d helped Coots catalogue his dried herb and plant closet one snowy day last winter and he’d done all the _S_ jars _and_ all the _C’_ s. Saffron crocus wasn’t a thing, at least not in Coots’ extensive collection.

He did know one thing, the moon cycle schedule. He had it memorized, and it was an easy enough incantation to figure it out if he didn’t. He knew it, sure, but that didn’t mean he had to _like_ it.

There was a full moon in two days.

Two days to figure out what saffron crocus was, two days to determine whether or not doing this thing for Patrick would hurt anyone else or himself, two days to choose whether or not to listen to Coots and tell his vets what was going on.

It should’ve been an easy choice. Coots and Jake could help with saffron crocus, Claude and Raff could run some tests with obsidian, JVR could crack open some of his magic history books and see if anything like this had happened to any other Volantes witch in the past. Moose, Nisky, hell, even Kevin could use their talents to help him. They were in a veteran position in the Niche _because_ they were good witches, _because_ they wanted to help and see their younger counterparts succeed.

Magic was weird, but magic was also consistent. Little sparks and flashes could be seen in babies and young kids, but it steadily climbed until it was strongest in those in their late teens, twenties, and early thirties. By mid-thirties, the magic would shrink and recede. When their magic started to fade, most witches left the coven and rejoined their families in Volantes; started their own, lived normal lives and tended their own little fire of magic until it flickered out completely.

Some witches, like AV, were able to keep their magic sense even as they aged, and became mentors, living reclusive lives and finding new magic users to keep the coven strong. Claude spent enough time with AV that maybe he saw something like that in Claude; that he’d be able to help Volantes even after his magic began to fade.

It hadn’t always been like that; magic growing in younger witches before shrinking and fading as they grew older. Travis had lessons about magical history, sure, when he was younger and first starting to practice. But he’d never forget sitting in the tiny corner of the main kitchen, crosslegged with a warm cup of spiced rum that Claude liked to make in the wintertime, listening with Sanny next to him and Oskar and Scotty crowded below their cushioned windowseat as JVR told them about the Cup.

It was almost a legend, the Cup. No witch alive had seen it in person, but there were more than enough stories and lore in JVR’s history books to back up his claims; that the Cup brought magic to whatever city it resided in. If the Cup lived in Volantes, the magic in her witches would never fade and flicker out.

But that was the problem, right? There was only one Cup, but there were way more cities than just Volantes out there. And all of those cities had witches, too, witches that were also training for both the possibility of attack and the slim chance that the Cup would reappear and they’d be sent on a campaign to find it and bring it back to their city. Even if the Cup somehow reappeared, even if the Volantes witches figured out where it was and how to get it, there was always the chance they'd be destroyed by some other city's witches before they even had a chance. And there were some really nasty witches out there; witches that, if given the Cup's power, definitely wouldn't stop at just taking that power for themselves and their city.

Snow had been falling in the dark outside and JVR had told them all of this in this hushed, slow voice, like he’d been telling secrets and they were lucky to even hear them. It made all of it seem kind of unbelievable, and Travis had asked Claude a few weeks later if it was even real. 

“Of course it’s real,” Claude had said, but Travis didn’t miss the way his normally open face closed off, and the way his shoulders tightened. “As real as anything else.”

As he turned away Travis had heard him mutter something about JVR giving the baby witches rum, even though he was the one who had made it and later dished it out in the kitchen that snowy night.

Travis had been eighteen then, not new at the Niche but new as a fully conscripted witch, cemented in the coven, old enough to feel the magic coursing through his veins and young enough for that to make him feel invincible in turn. Him, Sanny, and Oskar had talked about the Cup constantly for about a year after that, making notes in their grimores and talking about spells and plans and schemes for their coven to go on one of those campaigns to find it and bring full-fledged magic back to Volantes for good. That was even before they knew Hartsy would become a prodigy protector, before Provy and Sanny started to grow into their own as defenders, before Oskar… Well, Oskar was always good at magic.

JVR had said it wasn’t unheard of for mentors like AV to send their covens on campaigns, but all of that stuff was ancient history. When Travis and Sanny pressed him about recent things that _could’ve_ been campaigns, like the way Claude or Jake sometimes disappeared to do mysterious things for AV, he clammed up. That was for them to do, for AV to know, and for them to find out if they worked hard, were good little witches, and ate their vegetables, blah, blah, blah.

Talk about the Cup waned soon after that. There was an overwhelming amount to focus on around the Niche, anyway, too much magic to learn, too many rituals to do. Travis wasn’t old now, not by any sense of the word, and he had ten or more good years of magic left, but he definitely wasn’t eighteen anymore. Every once in a while he’d think about the Cup, about AV, about possibility, and about how, if Claude’s magic wasn’t up to par to find the damn thing, what chance would he possibly have?

He just didn’t know what he’d be without magic. It was such a huge part of him, gave him the Niche, gave him Sanny and Oskar and Provy and Kevin and everyone else. Made him _try_ , made him push himself and prove himself.

Magic was in him, woven into the fabric of his soul. He had no idea what he’d do when it disappeared.

“Can we calm down for a second,” he muttered to himself as he pushed open the library’s heavy door. There was no one else in this entire wing, but the darkness was soon pushed back by candles flickering to light along the tall bookshelves. Travis let the door thud shut behind him.

There was no use worrying about something that was ten years, give or take, in the future, he _knew_ that. Was he still going to do it? Oh, absolutely.

He made it about five yards into the library before he stopped in his tracks and looked around. Bookshelves soared up to the domed ceiling on either side of him; rolling ladders attached by brackets ready for more adventurous witches and summoning incantations carved on the horizontal shelves for those with no time to waste.

Also, those who knew exactly what they were looking for. Incantations wouldn’t work for a vague _a cat man in dreamspace told me to do this, what does it mean_ question. Travis scraped his hands through his still-damp hair. He wasn’t great at this whole thing, anyway, the research and reading and understanding-thick-dusty-books part of magic. This is when he needed someone like JVR, or Coots, or—

 _You know who would’ve helped you, no questions asked?_ he asked himself with more venom than he realized was still inside him. _The only witch you know who reads magical theory for fun, and who you also almost deepfried with a dreamspace experiment earlier today._

And who was still up in the Lookout, trying to sleep and failing, from what Travis could feel. He shifted his shoulders uncomfortably as he kept reaching out, pushing to use his magic to make Oskar feel better just like Oskar always did for him. His chest ached; the carving, emptying sensation making itself feel known again.

He let out his breath in a frustrated huff and rubbed the aching spot in the center of his chest. Reading a bunch of unintelligible magical garble was only going to make him more frustrated, but he grabbed the biggest book on the nearest shelf and went to his normal corner, all the way in the back of the second floor of the library. He could see out through two stuffed-to-overflowing shelves, but no one could see him. There were two comfortable chairs and a big embroidered ottoman, and he’d spent countless hours with Sanny and Oskar holed away back here with assignments and work when they were still apprentices and not yet fully-fledged witches.

The library had a dusty, ancient sort of smell that always made Travis feel small. It was filled with so much knowledge, and he… Well. He knew where to start, at least.

He flipped open the heavy, almost wooden-feeling cover of the book he’d chosen and ran his finger down the table of contents. _There,_ something recognizable. _Black salt._ He flipped to page five hundred forty-five, squinting at the words hard enough that his nose almost touched the page. _Damn,_ did he need glasses? No, just… A few more candles flickered to life and his corner brightened. _There._

Travis read the few pages detailing black salt, scratching notes on his scrap of paper as he went. It was mainly used for protection, he remembered that from Claude and Jake’s lessons on spellcasting and wards over the years. He didn’t know that it was way more powerful if one made their own using charcoal, sea salt, and a mortar and pestle, and that black salt was also mixed with eggshells and sometimes whatever herbs the witch making it deemed useful.

“I can do this,” he muttered as he underlined _black salt_ at the top of his notes a few times. “Make my own salt, make it powerful enough to talk to…” He cleared his throat. It didn’t feel right to say the name, even though he couldn’t be sure it was Cat’s real name. Names held power. He wouldn’t give _his_ real name to any random witch who fell into _his_ dreamspace, and Cat – _Patrick—_ seemed way cagier than him.

Whatever. This was a good first step, something to keep his hands busy as he tried to figure out if all of this was worth it, if doing unknown magic in secret was the way to go, or if he should try and explain that Coots, Raff, Jake, _and_ Claude were all wrong and Cat was, in fact, freaky, magical, _and_ a cute guy all at once.

 _Patrick._ Travis’s cheeks got hot just thinking the name.

Coots’ admonishment still hung around his neck, though. _Weakness._ _Cursed._ He said he hadn’t meant it that way, but it sure felt like it. Hell, he could still be right. Travis rolled his shoulders back uncomfortably. There was no proof that Patrick was, well, _good_. There were a lot of cities around, a lot of witches with a vendetta against Volantes that ran deep, ages and ages old. Just because Volantes was at peace didn’t mean there wasn’t ever a possibility of an attack.

 _Always looking for weakness._ Travis twitched again and closed the book, setting it down on the table next to his armchair before drawing his legs up to sit crosslegged. He leaned his elbows down on his calves and his forehead into his hands, letting his fingers press and scrape against his temples and into his hairline. Patrick didn’t _feel_ evil. He felt different, and closed-off, and a little bit desperate. He’d asked Travis for help the first time they met, so something was obviously wrong.

And Travis wasn’t _cursed_. He’d never been cursed before, but he figured it would be a little more, well _painful_ than whatever was going on with Patrick. Although, the chest pain thing wasn’t great. That was normal, though, and had been happening for years before this whole possible-curse business. It _had_ been increasing over these past few days, though, and…

_There._

“Oh my god,” Travis managed to grunt out, and curled over his legs. “ _Fuck_.”

It felt like someone had started carving away at his chest with a butter knife. It lasted for maybe forty seconds (more like forty hours, but who was splitting hairs) before Travis could sit back up again, his forehead damp with sweat and his palms all marred by fingernail marks.

 _That_ wasn’t normal. That had been the worst one yet, barring the one that started this whole business during huddle two mornings ago. But— _hey!_

Oskar’s energy was burning strong, reaching out to him from the Lookout. Oskar was up and about, Oskar felt fine.

Oskar _wanted_ him.

Travis hopped out of the dent he’d made for himself in the armchair, faster than someone who’d almost been killed by chest pains should’ve been able to. He waved his hand at the book and it hovered for a moment before shooting past him, heading back to its proper space on the shelf. Before dousing the candles, Travis read his list once more, folded it, and shoved it into his pocket. Black salt could wait, he had more important things to do.

*****

“You’re crushing me,” Oskar grunted.

“Don’t care,” Travis said into his neck, and got a mouthful of Oskar’s blond hair. He spat it out, and felt Oskar tense.

“Is my hair going to be covered in your spit?”

Travis buried his nose further into Oskar’s neck. “Maybe?”

“Gross.” Oskar stayed in the hug anyway, resting his chin on Travis’s shoulder and rubbing one hand in reassuring circles between his shoulderblades. “It’s okay, Teeks. I’m okay.”

“It’s _not_.” Travis, against all of his instincts, pulled away. “I’m so sorry, Oskar, I didn’t mean to—“

“I know.” Oskar took Travis’s face in both of his cool hands, and Travis felt the tension leak out of his temples, felt the pressure behind his eyes lessen. It smelled like sage and cinnamon and the last dregs of whatever potion Jake had made Oskar down. “Listen to me. I love you, Travis. It was a _mistake_ , we all make mistakes.” He pulled him into another hug. “I’m okay, and so are you.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Travis said quietly. _Here,_ with him, but also _here_ in the same dimension, safe and sound.

“You learned your lesson, I hope,” Jake grumbled from the back corner of the Lookout. Oskar squeezed his shoulder twice before breaking apart again.

“It was just as much my fault as it was TK’s,” he said, and Travis’s face, against all of his instincts and general feelings over the past few hours, split into a huge grin.

“You’re the best,” he said, soft enough that Jake couldn’t hear, and bumped Oskar with his hip.

“I know,” Oskar returned, and bumped him right back.

“…don’t know if we even _can_ do that.” Travis caught the tail-end of Claude’s sentence as he burst into the Lookout, Coots directly behind him and a few others caught in their wake. JVR, Raff, Nisky, Moose… _Oh, shit._

He turned to Oskar, whose eyes were the size of dinner plates.

“I’m in trouble,” Travis mouthed.

Oskar didn’t get a chance to respond before Claude came up behind him, clapped him on the shoulder, asked how he was feeling, and very politely, very firmly, and very definitively asked him to get the entire hell out of the Lookout so the vets could kick Travis’s ass.

(Okay, he didn’t _say_ that, but that’s what Travis’s brain interpreted it as, and Travis’s brain was always right.)

(Okay, not _always_ right, but right _sometimes_.)

Either way, Oskar scooted out of the Lookout as fast as he could, throwing a sympathetic look over his shoulder towards Travis and another look underneath that first look, an _I’m-going-to-tell-Sanny-and-Laughts-everything-immediately_ sort of look. Great. Travis was a dramatic kind of person in general, and tended to do things in a go-big-or-go-home kind of way, but this was a lot of drama in a short amount of time. He needed a nap.

Claude closed the Lookout’s heavy wooden door, turned to face Travis, and crossed his arms.

Travis shoved his hands into his pockets. He wasn’t going to get a nap anytime soon.

“What were you thinking?” Claude asked, stalking around Travis to get to the clump of older witches in the middle of the Lookout’s sun-dappled floor. “Messing with stuff you don’t understand, dragging Lindblom and Sanheim into it with you?”

“They agreed to—” Travis started arguing, but clammed his mouth shut as Claude glared.

“Those two would do _anything_ for you. And look where it got them.”

“We’re just worried about you,” JVR broke in before actual steam started coming out of Claude’s ears. “Your judgement about this whole thing hasn’t been the best, and…”

“We don’t want to see anyone else get hurt,” Coots finished.

From the very back of the group, Jake cleared his throat. There was some sort of dark powder coating the very bottom of his beard, and there was a bright swipe of teal across his forehead. He crossed his big arms in an exact replica of Claude’s pose. 

“I’m performing a ritual tonight,” he said. “Going to see if there’s been any wide swathes of negative energy focused on us over the past few days. I should be able to see trails and track it back to its source.”

“You guys still think I’m cursed?” Travis burst out. “I’m not, I _promise_ , I think I’d know—”

“You think you’d know?” Claude cut him off. “Konecny, you’re a good witch. You have a lot of magic, you make the Niche better. But _fuck_ , you can’t do it all on your own. Look what happens when you try.”

“I wasn’t on my own, Oskar and Sanny—”

“Did you listen to Oskar when he said it was a bad idea?”

It was Travis’s turn to cross his arms. “No.”

“You’re not the only person who you affect,” Claude said. “I want you to take a day, okay? No lessons, no practice. No magic. Clear your head.”

Indignation bloomed in Travis’s chest, made the tips of his fingers and his cheeks and ears flame with heat. “I don’t need to _take a day_ —”

Claude tilted his chin and the temperature in the Lookout dropped ten degrees. Somewhere outside, thunder rumbled even as the sun shone. Travis unwillingly took a step back.

“A day might help,” he said.

“Jake will perform the ritual tonight.” Coots stepped in. “I’ll ask Hayes to help me prepare what he needs. We’ll figure this out, TK. We’re your family.”

The veteran witches all filed out of the Lookout; Nisky pressed the back of his hand to Travis’s forehead for a heartbeat, Moose gave him a one-armed hug, Coots plucked a few of his hairs to put in a vial he then stashed in one of his belt’s many pockets. Jake took Raff and JVR back into one of the side rooms to help him stack boxes of overflow dried ingredients, and Travis was left by the biggest window with Claude, who still didn’t look like the same guy who had hugged him at two in the morning barely twelve hours ago.

“I’m sorry,” Travis said eventually, and the lines in Claude’s forehead softened.

“I guess I don’t understand,” he said. “You’re passionate and flighty, sure, but _damn_. At least you usually make sense to me.”

Travis gave a very halfhearted shrug. “It’s been a weird couple of days.”

That made Claude laugh, a huff through his nose, but still a laugh. “I don’t _want_ you to be cursed, Teeks, but we can fix that. It’ll at least give us a starting point, and maybe it’ll all make sense then.”

“Fuck, G, I don’t want to be cursed either!”

Claude really did laugh at that, one of the ones where he showed all of his teeth and the skin beside his eyes crinkled. “It’s not all that bad. I got used to it when I was your age.”

Travis tilted his head. “Volantes was still at peace when you were my age.”

“Maybe I’ll tell you all about it sometime.” Claude clapped him on the back and turned him towards the Lookout’s doorway. “I’ll summon you tomorrow so we can talk to Jake and Coots about the ritual, okay? Until then…”

“I’ll relax,” Travis finished. 

“Good man.” Claude patted his shoulder again. “No big magic, no helping others practice, no spellcasting. Cook something, maybe. That always makes me feel better.”

“I’ll perfect the tomato soup recipe,” Travis said, very obviously joking, but Claude’s face dropped into a frown quicker than Travis regretted joking about the tomato soup. “I’m _kidding_ , G, yours is the best and always will be.”

“You better believe it.” Claude gave him a nudge towards the door. “If anything weird happens, you let me know right away.”

“Will do.” Travis threw a salute back over his shoulder and left the Lookout. On the second step down, right out of view of anyone directly leaving the tower, Cat _—Patrick—_ sat with his tail draped over his paws, peering over the top of the step like he’d been waiting for Travis.

Travis, ever calm and collected, let out a yelp.

“You can’t _be_ here,” he said, and started going down the stairs. He made little shooing motions at Patrick every time he took a step. “They still think you’re a curse, and I… Well, I’m not convinced you’re not yet, either, to be honest, my week’s kind of gone to shit ever since you showed up.”

Patrick looked up at him with those stormy eyes and Travis— damn it, he melted a little.

“Okay, you told me you’re not a curse and I believe that, I think. But everything’s weird. You need to lay low until I figure some stuff out.”

Patrick _mrow_ ed. 

“You stay in my room until tomorrow night, okay? I’ll get some food and water and bring it up.”

Another _mrow_ , this one more urgent.

“Yeah, _tomorrow night_. The full moon.” Travis paused, one hand on his door handle. He hadn’t really committed until he saw Patrick again, but seeing those eyes just made him think about the dreamspace, about the cry for help, about the instructions for the full moon. “Fuck it all— we’re doing it. I’ll get all the stuff and we can talk, for real this time.”

*****

Travis _sucked_ at lying.

It was part of the reason he was so good at emotional magic; he wore his heart on his sleeve day in and day out. Openness and honesty was pretty much his brand around the Niche, so much so that it got to the point where he’d gotten on the nerves of pretty much every witch he lived with at one time or another.

When they were younger, Sanny and Scotty wrangled him into joining a plan to cheat on one of Moose’s lessons; Travis had caved and told him about it immediately. Carter, fully colorblind, had stopped coming to Travis for opinions on his various outfits; he’d had his feelings hurt by brutal honesty one too many times. And if Travis was in a bad mood, everyone would know about it and be affected by it. 

However, for any part of this full moon plan to work, he was going to have to get good at lying, and _fast._

Okay, he was probably not ever going to be good at full-on _lying._ But half-truths? Little white lies? He could get good at those for _sure._

That’s when Bee rounded the corner, and Travis took a deep breath.

_I can do this._

“Beezer!” he called. Bee’s face lit up and he actually jogged down the hallway to meet Travis.

“TK!” He slung his arm around Travis’s shoulders and pulled him close. “I’ve been hearing a lot of weird shit about you and that cat, you want to clear any of that up for me?” Travis wiggled around and pinched his side hard enough that he squawked and let him go.

“Yeah, sure, but you want to help me with something while I tell you?”

“Whatcha need?”

“Jake’s doing a ritual later to find out if I’ve been cursed,” Travis said, and Bee choked a little bit. He slapped him on his back.

“ _Cursed?”_

They rounded a corner. Travis had been subtly leading them to one of the smaller kitchens off of the fifth yard. “It’s been a long fuckin’ day, Bee.”

He blew a breath out. “I bet. So what do we have to do for Jake?”

“We have to make black salt,” Travis said, and propped open the heavy door into the kitchen with his foot, allowing Bee to enter first. He pulled the scrap of paper from the library out of his pocket. “It’s pretty easy, he gave me some instructions.”

Bee peered at it over his shoulder. “That’s not Jake’s handwriting.”

“Oh, uh.” Travis folded it up hurriedly. “I wrote it down, his hands were covered in, uh, goo.”

“Goo?” He raised his eyebrows. “Silver or green?”

“Uh, silver?”

Bee paused for a moment, allowed Travis to reevaluate his entire life, and then nodded sagely like Jake’s big hands being covered in strange silver goo made perfect sense. “It _is_ a Friday.”

 _What the fuck—_ “Yeah, uh, sure. Help me with this?”

Together they hefted a huge marble mortar and pestle down from one of the higher shelves. Travis gathered the sea salt, charcoal, and eggshells (kept in the very far back of one of the furthermost shelves; he’d had to stand on his tiptoes and really _dig_ ) while Bee looked over his scrap of paper again.

“What herbs are we supposed to put in this?” he called back as Travis dug for the eggshells. “It says _whatever necessary,_ Jake didn’t tell you for sure?”

 _Shit._ “Uh, grab some mugwort, some lavender, and like a ton of sage,” Travis called back. Enhancement of psychic energy under the moon, purification, and protection from evil. That sounded like a pretty good recipe to him. He gathered up the various baskets and containers and transported them back to the big table, dumping everything out before reorganizing it quickly. He took the pestle from Bee and began to scrape the bottom of the mortar as Bee threw dried herbs into it one by one, crushing them into a fine powder. 

“So, Beezer,” he started as he poured probably more sea salt than necessary into the bottom of the mortar. “I was reading something about herbs and I came across one I’ve never heard of. Saffron crocus. Did Jake ever say anything about that, or—”

“Yeah, he has it,” Bee said, breaking the charcoal into smaller pieces before tossing them into the mortar. “I’ve never seen it, though, he keeps it locked up because it’s so rare.”

“What’s so special about it?”

“The plants are apparently super hard to grow,” Bee said, raising his voice over the loud scraping of the pestle. “Even Coots can hardly do it. So the flowers come around once in a lifetime or something else dramatic like that, and the inside bit of it looks like saffron, like the cooking kind but different. It’s like a crazy powerful energy booster. Makes spells _way_ potent.” 

_Patrick’s dreamspace,_ Travis thought. It must take a huge amount of effort for Patrick to pull Travis into his dreamspace in the first place; maybe the saffron crocus would help him keep it up long enough for them to have a real conversation. But it was locked up in the Lookout, and there was no way Jake would let him even look at it, let alone _use_ some of it without an explanation. 

Even if he explained what was going on, there was still no chance he’d be able to do this by himself, the way _he_ wanted to do it. The vets would get involved, or maybe the vets wouldn't even believe him. They definitely wouldn't, not since they decided Patrick wasn't magical. _No._ He’d do this without involving anyone else, he’d get concrete evidence that Patrick _was_ magical, and good, and definitely _not_ a curse, and he’d bring Claude a solid enough plan to help him that there was no way he’d get in trouble over it. 

“A few more lies to help someone in trouble,” he muttered to himself as he ground the ingredients in the mortar probably more than necessary, just to make sure everything was mixed together.

“What was that?” Bee asked.

“Nothing,” Travis replied, dipping his hand into the black salt and letting it run through his fingers like sand through an hourglass. “Just talking to myself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: the full moon.
> 
> thank you for reading!! feedback is forever appreciated, and as always, i'm on twitter @thesedangers <3
> 
> -brie


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